Government Computer News discusses how a federated approach makes identity management portable: Overlapping identity management systems can be as much of a pain to users — and ultimately to systems administrators — as multiple passwords. Agencies that maintain multiple user repositories or whose processes cross more than one security domain should consider implementing federated identity management to reduce administrative overhead and costs while increasing security and simplifying the user’s experience.

Pat Patterson blogs on the the Project Concordia workshop held at RSA 2008 that shows SAML 2.0/WS-Federation single sign-on from a service provider to an identity provider. The identity provider authenticates the user via a managed information card and sends claims from the card to the service provider as SAML 2.0 attributes. Note that not every combination of SAML 2.0/WS-Federation SP, IdP and Information Card STS completely works, but enough that the approach was proven.

Ping Identity announced the acquisition of Sxip Access, a pioneering product for on-demand identity management. The deal enables Ping to accelerate its SaaS program and obtain proven technology for extending its flagship PingFederate product with the complementary Sxip Access feature set and deployment options. Ping Federate provides rapidly deployable software for secure Internet single sign-on (SSO). The Ping and Sxip technologies combine identity and access management solutions for software-as-a-service and federated identity.