Vasilis Koulolias, the dissemination leader for the group – Secure Identity Across Borders Linked (STORK) – said the SAML 2 will be the core protocol for its common identity framework. The framework would help federate identities among EU members so a user could be authenticated in one country and use those credentials to access information or services in another country.
"This choice was mainly driven by SAML adoption in current member states' eGovernment infrastructure, its ease of implementation, the availability of components, its general recognition as an official standard, and its wide acceptance in the federated identity world (Liberty Alliance, etc.)," Koulolias said in a e-mail in response to a Network World that ran last week.
Specifically, Koulolias said SAML's "holder of key" profile is being "investigated in order to minimize residual risks common in several identity federation approaches, and industry has been invited to lend its support in advancing their products along that road."
Members of the Information Card Foundation and others argued at STORK's Industry Group meeting late last month that Information Card technology could fill that role.
Drummond Reed, executive director of the Information Card Foundation, said last months discussion at the Industry Group meeting with STORK project leaders convinced them to consider Information Card technology.
But Koulolias said in his e-mail to Network World: "The STORK view regarding Information Card has not changed. In its current version, Information Card and its real life clients do not support all STORK needs: some eID cards are not supported, the SAML protocol is not supported, all security issues are not solved, etc."
However, Koulolias said evolution of the Information Card technology could provide "interesting additions" to the STORK protocols. "For instance, the Information Card clients could be used to provide some standard extra-features that do not currently exist in any client environment."
Koulolias said regardless of the technology used to build STORK's identity project that the group will continue "open and transparent" collaboration with the industry at large in order to make STORK a success.
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