The next frontier for identity management

Federation, a burgeoning technology that makes identity and entitlements portable, is a major step in the progress of identity management. These advances should make extending authentication across multiple domains easier to achieve, experts say. The technology is a natural fit for many industries, but it's still in the early adoption phase. Federation started in the telecommunications industry, but major organizations such as American Express, Boeing, Harvard University, Phillips and Sun Microsystems have federation-related projects underway. But if federation is to take off, standardization is vital. Although standards and specifications are relatively mature, development of Web services security standards are not.

For more on the future of identity:
- see this article from Network Computing