WS-Federation Publishes Web Services Specification

BEA Systems, IBM, Microsoft, RSA Security and VeriSign published a set of Web services specifications that provide developers with a standard way of adding security capabilities to the Web services they build. The WS-Federation specification defines mechanisms to allow developers to manage and establish trust relationships across companies and domains that are using different types of security solutions, including the support for federated identities. Federated identities involve the exchange of identity information between systems, such as the security clearance level or name of the user or Web service.


Microsoft and IBM also published a new whitepaper which describes the challenges associated with federated identity management.http://msdn.microsoft.com/ws-federation/