VRSN MITM

[R. A. Hettinga]

http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,4287,SB1014167284826456880,00.html




February 20, 2002
E-COMMERCE
VeriSign's Blueprint Will Facilitate
Online Authentication Developments

By NICK WINGFIELD
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


VeriSign Inc. announced a new plan to act as a neutral party between rival
factions in the market for online authentication services.

The plan involves a technical blueprint, introduced Tuesday by Mountain
View, Calif.-based VeriSign, that the company is pushing as a way to
simplify the creation of sophisticated Web applications that require
high-levels of security. A broad range of companies agreed to support
VeriSign's technologies and specifications in their software programming
tools and other products -- including two companies that have put forth
competing proposals for online authentication services, Microsoft Corp. and
Sun Microsystems Inc.

Microsoft and Sun have been working separately to set technical ground
rules that will allow users of personal computers and other devices to get
access to Internet resources by logging on just once, rather than having to
fumble with multiple passwords. Microsoft's Passport technology is already
in use on sites across the Internet. Sun last year founded, along with more
than two dozen companies, a consortium called the Liberty Alliance to
create an alternative set of authentication specifications for Web sites,
though the group hasn't produced a product for consumers to use. Some
Liberty representatives have signaled an eagerness to get Microsoft to join
the alliance, and Microsoft executives haven't ruled out that possibility.

VeriSign, meanwhile, says it sees an opportunity to help broker personal
information between competing online identity services by acting as a kind
of independent hub for the various plans. The company's technologies and
services will also make it easier for businesses to create applications
that need to verify someone's identity. For instance, a health-care
provider could make an application that verifies medical claims by checking
a database of doctors, all of whose identities have been verified by
VeriSign.

In addition to Microsoft and Sun, International Business Machines Corp.,
Oracle Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., BEA Systems Inc. and others also agreed
to support the VeriSign framework in their products. "We'll be the
underpinnings across all of them," said Anil Pereira, a senior vice
president at VeriSign.

Write to Nick Wingfield at nick.wingfield at wsj.com1
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1014167284826456880.djm,00.html
Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) mailto:nick.wingfield at wsj.com

Updated February 20, 2002 3:15 p.m. EST

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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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