Marco Casassa Mont - Web Page - HP Labs

This R&D project is in the context of Liberty Alliance’s initiative on Identity Capable Platforms and Provisioning Services.

Identity-capable platforms (ICP) are devices (e.g. laptops, PDAs, smartphones, etc.) that enable secure and trusted interactions of users with services, within organisations and/or in federated service scenarios. This is achieved with a mixture of software and (possibly) hardware technologies.

A working group in Liberty Alliance (backed, among many, by Intel, BT, HP Software/HP Labs) is defining ICP properties and its capabilities along with the required back-end operational services. Federated services and federated identity management is a fast growing market. Based on Liberty Alliance (LA) sources, more than 2 billion identities are nowadays impacted by/use LA technologies and related solutions. ICP-enabled solutions are keys to create further confidence, safety and a simplified user participation in this world.

HP Software business and HP Labs have been involved in this Liberty Alliance initiative, to research and develop back-end service provisioning capabilities (via HP Identity Management assets - HP OpenView Select Federation) that are required to enable ICP.

Our work has been successfully demonstrated with a prototype and related Proof-of-Concept v1 (PoCv1). A presentation of this PoCv1 has been given at RSA 2007 (showcasing joint work done by Intel, BT, HP/HP Labs): it received positive feedback and interest from the audience. The figure below (source) shows the basic concepts underpinning PoCv1.

Next steps involve further refining related Liberty Alliance standards and moving towards a PoCv2, to be potentially used in technical pilots and trials.

Further information and details about this project and related Liberty Alliance's initiative can be found at the following links:

• PoCv1 Material: RSA 2007 workshop, INTEL/ BT/HP/HP Labs Proof of Concept of Secure Device Provisioning

• Liberty Alliance: Liberty Alliance, Advanced Client Technologies