OATH Announces 2006 Roadmap for Open Authentication Technology Milestones; OATH Membership Continues to Expand adding AOL; Organization Seeks Feedback from End-User Companies

Business Wire, Nov 22, 2005

WASHINGTON CROSSING, Pa. -- OATH, the Initiative for Open AuTHentication, today announced the organization's 2006 technology roadmap that builds upon the technical framework for open authentication established by the OATH Reference Architecture released earlier this year. OATH is a consortium of leading authentication hardware and software companies, end-user organizations and security professionals dedicated to advancing industry-backed standards for open authentication.

OATH is well positioned to deliver industry-endorsed standards for royalty-free open authentication technologies to resolve security threats such as identity theft, phishing, internal security breaches and government compliance requiring a stronger level of authentication than static usernames and passwords. OATH has a proven track record delivering the organization's original charter including the development of the IETF HMAC OTP specification, adherence to Public Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS#11), and release of the OATH Reference Architecture, all highlights of OATH's 2005 technology achievements. This record positions OATH as the leading industry organization for open authentication technology solutions.

The 2006 OATH Roadmap outlines specific deliverables that will help realize the goals of device innovation and embedding, interoperability and native application and platform support. Work items currently defined in the OATH Roadmap fall under the following categories:

--Multiple Token, Device, and Client APIs

--Provisioning Protocols

--Web Services Security

"OATH is building on the momentum generated in 2005 through meeting its technology milestones and through membership growth," said Bob Blakley, OATH Joint Coordination Committee (JCC) chair and chief scientist (Security and Privacy), IBM. "Our 2006 roadmap is based on the feedback from customers and end-user company members. Our member companies are committed to achieving each of these milestones for advancing the standards for open authentication in 2006."

"We are pleased to work with OATH to promote stronger authentication for Internet users," said Flavio Sonis, director of authentication for AOL. "OATH is a comprehensive effort to make strong authentication scalable and cost-effective for service providers to deploy."

OATH has grown to 55 members since it was formed nearly two years ago and recently added AOL as a new member. The organization continues to seek new members from security and application vendors, end-user companies, services firms and individuals seeking to help shape industry-backed standards for royalty-free open authentication technology.

The 2006 OATH Roadmap

The 2006 OATH Roadmap focuses on several areas for royalty-free open authentication. In the 1H/2006, the work items OATH will initiate include:

--Portable Symmetric Key Container

--Token Identifier Namespace

--HOTP Extensions

--Web Services OTP Validation Protocol

In 2H/2006, the work items OATH will initiate include:

--Simple Credential Provisioning Protocol

--WS-Security OTP Token Profile

--OTP Client APIs

--EAP-OTP Support for Wireless

Send a request to info@openauthentication.org to receive a copy of the OATH 2006 Roadmap.

Members of OATH have been working to further define the technical requirements and establish a specific implementation schedule for each item. Companies wishing to obtain input to this process and gain advance knowledge of these plans are invited to join OATH so that they can participate in the OATH process. OATH continues seeking comment and feedback from end-user organizations as it seeks to develop royalty-free, industry-endorsed standards for open authentication. Visit OATH's Web site at www.openauthentication.org for more information on joining the organization.

The Value of OATH

"The OATH standard signals to the world that One Time Password technologies have entered the mainstream. We expect that OATH will create an open standard-based ecosystem that will provide ubiquity for the usage of strong credentials, resulting in a significant enhancement of the Digital Identity Assurance level. I am pleased to say that our Digital Identity Assurance suite of products will support and promote the OATH standards."

--Dominic Fedronic, Chief Technology Officer, ActivIdentity

"2006 will be an exciting year as OATH initiatives continue to enable strong authentication across disparate industries. Axalto's Protiva line of OATH-compatible strong authentication devices enable customers to deploy the solution that fits their needs with minimal impact to existing infrastructure. As strong authentication becomes more important in our digital world, Axalto builds on a 25-year history and remains committed to promoting standards such as OATH that ease adoption of security solutions."

--Francois Lasnier, Vice President, Axalto North America

"The key to the successful mass consumer deployment of strong authentication is a comprehensive framework for provisioning and managing a mix of both hard and soft tokens. OATH's roadmap offers a clear and achievable path to the technical and business solutions that will support the large-scale availability of strong authentication."