The project, to be called “Liberty Alliance” represents the most significant competition to Passport which, with a claimed 165 million accounts, is a powerful leader in the field of user identity and authentication. The Liberty Alliance differs from Passport in that sensitive data will be held by several companies rather than being controlled by a single party- a feature for which Passport has faced recent criticism.
The Alliance embodies three main objectives: to securely preserve personal information, to provide a universal, open standard for single sign-on and to ensure that this spans all internet connected devices including mobile phones, portable computers, TVs or even cars.
Through this decentralised authentication system, The Alliance hopes to smooth the way for commerce on the internet with users requiring a single log-in for access to many diverse internet resources. The Alliance also hopes to benefit businesses which will be able to adopt one technology which gives access to all users regardless of the device being used.
Last week, Microsoft proposed to share its Passport technology with other companies such as rivals AOL Time Warner, to establish a network of compatible technology in order to exchange information in much the same way as networks of bank ATMs.
Microsoft’s aim for Passport to become the industry standard has faced criticism in terms of data security, an element that Tim O’Reilly, CEO of technology publisher O’Reilly & Associates describes as essential to such a system: “we need an open, distributed system with implementations available from multiple technology providers…operating in a web of trust.”