Liberty Alliance

Liberty Alliance Project (LAP ) is the name of a business initiative (consisting of 150 companies, non -profit organizations and government agencies from the mobile-commerce and the security industry ) with the aim of cross-industry platforms and standards ( particularly in the area of mobile applications ) for the to develop global transaction security on the internet, technical and organizational questions regarding registration, certification and interoperability to clarify and to create an awareness of the needs of a secure mobile commerce in public.

For the development and the existence of secure and reliable digital ecosystems ( such as the Internet ) are concepts of identity and connections between individual identities is essential. ( Initially called also Project Liberty ) Liberty Alliance in this context describes specifications as the basis for managing identities in the context of networked structures and communication protocols for their application, for example in web services.

The project was initiated in 2001 by Sun Microsystems as a competitor to Microsoft Passport. The project has received broad support, well-known companies such as American Express, IBM, Intel and Oracle are working with. The aim is to using open standards to develop a system for single sign -on.

While Microsoft's Passport system provides a centralized server which manages all user and security information, Project Liberty is built on a regulated exchange of data between basically the same authorized user accounts on different computers.

In early 2005, a draft version 2 of the ID web services has been presented. The most important improvement is the support of the second version of the standard SAML.