OATH, the Initiative for Open Authentication, today announced the organization’s 2006 technology roadmap that builds upon the technical framework for open authentication established by the OATH Reference Architecture released earlier this year. OATH is a consortium of leading authentication hardware and software companies, end user organizations and security professionals dedicated to advancing industry-backed standards for open authentication. The 2006 OATH Roadmap focuses on several areas for royalty-free open authentication. In the 1H/2006, the work items OATH will initiate include:

• Portable Symmetric Key Container
• Token Identifier Namespace
• HOTP extensions
• Web Services OTP Validation protocol

In 2H/2006, the work items OATH will initiate include:

• Simple Credential Provisioning Protocol
• WS-Security OTP Token Profile
• OTP Client APIs
• EAP-OTP Support for Wireless

To receive a copy of the OATH 2006 Roadmap, send a request to info@openauthentication.org. Some of the current OATH members include: ActivIdentity, Inc., Aladdin Knowledge Systems, AOL, ARM, Assa Abloy ITG, , Authenex, Inc., Aventail Corporation, Axalto, BEA Systems, BMC Software, Checkpoint Software Technologies, Digital Persona, Diversinet Corp., Entrust Technologies, Inc., Forum Systems, Inc., Gemplus Corp, IBM, IMCentric, Inc., iovation, Inc., IronKey, Juniper Networks, Inc., K.K. Athena Smartcard Solutions, Livo Technologies SA, nCryptone, Passgo, Passlogix, Inc., Phoenix Technologies Ltd., PortWise, Protocom Development Systems, RedCannon Security, Inc., SafeNet, Inc., Signify, Smart Card Alliance, TriCipher, Inc., VASCO Data Security, Vocent, and VeriSign, Inc.