Single sign-on standards group Liberty Alliance has appointed Intel executive George Goodman president.
Goodman replaced Michael Barrett, vice president of security strategy at
American Express, whose term expired. Presidents of the Liberty Alliance serve one-year
terms, according to a spokesman, who said Barrett
will remain on the board as vice president.
As director of Intel’s Visualization and Trust Lab,
Goodman finds ways for Intel platforms to authenticate users’
identities. He has served as a member of Liberty’s management board since Intel joined
the Liberty Alliance in July.
“Intel joined Liberty Alliance to help the organization’s solid federated
identity management solutions reach more capable, robust client platforms,
which we’ve definitely achieved in 2004,” Goodman said in a statement. “Our
task going forward is to look at how Liberty can support, promote and work
with other existing standards projects to strengthen the emerging identity
infrastructure. We look forward to 2005 being the year of convergence.”
One example of the convergence Goodman speaks of is the possible integration
between the Liberty project, whose board consists of member companies such
as HP, IBM and Sun Microsystems, and the Web Services Interoperability
group, which also works on ways to enable secure Web services
Liberty and WS-I have been viewed by some as rivals, but both are moving
toward the same goals. Many experts expect they will join forces on some
fronts.
One obstacle to both is on the decline, as Microsoft is losing ubiquity with
its own single-sign on Passport system. Major partners, such as Monster.com
and eBay have dropped
Passport support out of security concerns.
Intel Exec Named Liberty Alliance President
