RSA Bets On SAML Across Security Product Line

By Richard Karpinski

RSA Security said Tuesday it plans to support Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 1.0 in its Web access management platform by the end of the year.

RSA will be among a group of vendors demonstrating SAML interoperability at next week's Burton Group Catalyst event. The long-awaited event will be the first public demonstration of broad interoperability of SAML implementations.

SAML is an XML framework for exchanging authentication, attribute, and authorization information among different systems. Its ability to scale across different vendor systems lays the groundwork for true single sign-on capabilities that can span across an array of Web sites and applications.

RSA said it will incorporate SAML functionality with RSA ClearTrust, its Web access management platform, by year's end. It said it will follow with more SAML support across other products to deliver interoperability across its platforms.

RSA's ClearTrust is a rules-based platform that centrally controls and manages user access privileges to Web resources. By incorporating SAML, the platform will better enable user single sign-on and allow authentication and identity information to be shared among multiple organizations and servers.

RSA has been a big backer of SAML. It recently granted royalty-free access to two key patents involved in SAML technology.