Winners in the Deployment Category:

Google and Plaxo - Google and Plaxo have won an award for their collaborative work in the development of a “hybrid onboarding” solution designed to increase the success rate of users finishing the registration process with a social network.

The solution uses a combination of open technologies referred to as the “OpenStack,” which includes OAuth, OpenID, Portable Contacts and XRDS. Because the implementation uses open technologies, the solution can be easily replicated by others to optimize onboarding between any OpenID Provider (OP) and Relying Party (RP) pairing. With a success rate of 92%, the application enhances the user experience while providing increased security and privacy protections. The service was deployed by Google and Plaxo in early 2009 and is available to hundreds of millions of Google users.

Signicat – Signicat has won a deployment award for the development of an online hosted Identity Provider that is offered as a managed service to private and public sector enterprises and organizations in the Nordic Region (Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland).

The service acts as an intermediary to provide organizations with easy and secure access to the region’s eID (electronic ID) infrastructure. The solution supports SAML for strong authentication and SAML and OpenID for Web Single Sign On, as well as eSignature for workflow and long-time archiving of signed documents. The Identity Provider went live in October 2005, and is currently used by approximately thirty organizations giving access to over 12 million pre-authenticated identities.

U.S. Department of Defense – The U.S. Department of Defense has won an deployment award for SPOT (Synchronized Pre-Deployment and Operational Tracker), a Web-based enterprise networking solution used by the agency for precise tracking and management of assets supporting U.S. forces deployed overseas.

The contractor cross-credentialing with SPOT has been developed and launched in collaboration between the U.S. Department of Defense and the Federation for Identity and Cross-Credentialing Systems, Inc. (FiXs). The system recognizes identity credentials issued by various government entities as well as compatible, standards-based, certified identity credentials issued by industry to support identity-based transactions between the U.S. Government, various international coalition governments, and supporting industry contractors and suppliers.

SPOT provides visibility into contingency contracts accounting for 10,439 companies and 3,783 active contracts, with the system currently supporting more than 12,650 end users.

Winners in the Proof of Concept Category:

fun communications – fun communications has won an award in the proof of concept category for the development of its WebCard Loyalty solution, a public portal that can be used worldwide.

WebCard Loyalty let’s anyone create their own customer loyalty system for the Internet using “virtual loyalty cards” and is based on Information Card Technology. The application combines user-centric identity management and customer loyalty programs such as bonus points, coupon promotions and discounts on partner websites, into a single application.

Retailers and portal operators can issue their own virtual loyalty cards that can serve as a reliable means of authentication and authorization. The portal can be adapted to meet individual requirements, and is suitable for issuing all types of virtual identification cards such as student ID cards, library cards and discount cards.

Gemalto and Vodafone – Gemalto and Vodafone Group R&D have won an award for the development of a solution that adds strong authentication capabilities to OpenID using a Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC, typically a SIM card) inserted in a handset or inside a USB token, and is using either public key infrastructure (PKI) or a one-time password (OTP) as the underlying authentication technology.

The application enables the use of distinct devices to access the service and to authenticate. The UICC (SIM) is used as a networked cryptographic computer exposing authentication services accessible via IP protocols. This provides users with new and convenient options for securely accessing OpenID-enabled sites from devices such as a PC, handset or game station. Mobile network operators could offer a service to allow end users to leverage UICC-based OpenID single-sign-on to secure access to Web applications.

NRI, NTT and Oracle – NRI, NTT and Oracle have won an award for an application that demonstrates the possibility and practicality of achieving policy interoperability between OpenID and SAML. Both technologies include mechanisms designed to carry identity assurance information; OpenID uses the Provider Authentication Policy Extension (PAPE), while SAML uses its Authentication Context.

While the two mechanisms are logically similar, until this proof of concept, they had not been demonstrated to be compatible. The application demonstrates how the number of services where an existing OpenID or SAML credential might be used could be effectively increased.