OATH Celebrates Second Anniversary at RSA Conference 2006

WASHINGTON CROSSING, PA, February 13, 2006 – OATH, the initiative for Open AuTHentication, today celebrated the organization’s second anniversary with a surge in new members, a strong track record of achieving technical milestones towards industry-backed standards for royalty-free open authentication, and an interoperability demonstration of OATH solutions on display at the OATH Pavilion #843 at the RSA Conference 2006.

OATH is a consortium of leading device, platform and application companies, and end user customers of authentication technologies. Since last August, OATH’s membership has expanded from 46 members to more than 60, an increase of 33 percent.

New members include: Crypto Intelligence; Deepnet Technologies; Diamelle; DynaSig Corp.; Entrust Technologies, Inc.; Identity Engines; SanDisk; Salt Group Pty. Ltd.; 41st Parameter; and Xelios Systems.

The organization continues to actively seek new members from security companies and end user companies to contribute to the goal of royalty-free open authentication technologies.

“OATH remains on track and is the major force developing industry-backed standards for royalty free open authentication,” said Colleen Kulhanek, director of business development at SafeNet, Inc. and OATH marketing chair. “As we continue towards achieving our technical milestones from our 2006 roadmap, we are working closely with our existing members to make sure that OATH is the sort of organization to which they can benefit. We welcome new members to join and participate in shaping the next generation of authentication technologies.”

“The key to the successful consumer acceptance of strong authentication is a framework that is transparent to the consumer and built into everyday devices such as USB drives and mobile flash cards,” said Carlos Gonzalez, senior director of USB product marketing, SanDisk. “The OATH-driven standards provide vendors such as SanDisk an open and interoperable base for innovative and user-friendly security solutions.”
“Entrust is committed to making stronger authentication practical and cost-effective for all applications,” said Chris Voice, CTO, Entrust, an OATH Coordinator level member. “Entrust sees OATH as essential to building large scale, flexible authentication solutions for consumers and enterprises.”

OATH members demonstrating in this year’s Pavilion include:

CertiSign
Digital Persona
Diversinet
Gemplus
Identita Technologies
Imprivata
nCryptone
PassGo Technologies
SanDisk
SPYRUS
Vasco
· VeriSign

About the Initiative for Open AuTHentication

The Initiative for Open AuTHentication (OATH) is the industry’s leading collaboration of device, platform and application companies, and end user customers of authentication technologies. OATH participants hope to foster use of strong authentication across networks, devices and applications. OATH participants work collectively to facilitate standards and build a reference architecture for open authentication while evangelizing the benefits of strong interoperable authentication in a networked world. As OATH grows, the organization is actively seeking feedback and technology contributions from end-user participants who share a common vision for open authentication technology and the products that provide this important measure of security.

OATH is dedicated to helping customers reduce the cost and complexity of deploying strong authentication within enterprises, and across the Internet. Since its formation, OATH’s membership includes security industry leaders from token manufacturers, platform vendors, smartcard providers, and security services companies. End user companies are joining OATH to add their voice and ideas towards the goal of open authentication.

Some current OATH members include: ActivIdentity, Inc.; Aladdin Knowledge Systems; AOL; ARM; Assa Abloy ITG; Authenex, Inc.; Aventail Corporation; Axalto; BMC Software; CertiSign Digital; Checkpoint Software Technologies; Citrix Systems; Crypto Intelligence; Deepnet Technologies; Diamelle; Digital Persona; Discretix Technologies; Diversinet Corp.; DynaSig Corp.; Encentuate; Entrust Technologies, Inc.; Forum Systems, Inc.; Gemplus Corp; IBM; Identita; Identity Engines; Imprivata; iovation, Inc.; IronKey; Iteon; Juniper Networks, Inc.; K.K. Athena Smartcard Solutions; Livo Technologies SA; nCryptone; Passgo; Passlogix, Inc.; Phoenix Technologies Ltd.; PortWise, Inc.; RedCannon Security, Inc.; SafLink; SafeNet, Inc.; SanDisk; Signify; Smart Card Alliance; SPYRUS; TriCipher, Inc.; VASCO Data Security; VeriSign, Inc.; 41st Parameter; and Xelios Systems.

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