OpenID family grows – How it can transform Identity Federation between enteprises

With Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! joining the OpenID Foundation, we may actually feel that something in federated access management is going to change. It is finally not the case of a vendor proposing a new standard – and adding to the cacophony of federation standards – but a set of moves towards a simple technology that today can alleviate password management woes at service providers.

Technology aside, OpenID will greatly help with reducing and removing the legal obstacles in the way of  identity federation’s proliferation. When payment-grade, commercial, and trusted identity provider service becomes a reality – VeriSign’s joining the OpenID camp clearly points in that direction – and software-as-a-service companies (like salesforce.com),  accept OpenID authentication from these trusted identity providers, then enterprises can truly start thinking about outsourcing password management identity management processes. When required, strong authentication integration with OpenID can rely on VerSign’s VIP or other vendors’ strong authentication acceptance network.

In addition to the above factors, resolving DNS spoofing vulnerabilities and productized integration with SAML and other federation technologies will be key enablers in OpenID’s success and promotion from the current low-value (e.g. blogsite) authentication usage, to becoming a full-fledged, enterprise-level federation solution.