20 February 2002 Verisign is promising to provide the default authentication mechanism for web services through a new open standards-based framework. A group of web services companies, including IBM, Microsoft, iPlanet, WebMethods and Oracle, have also agreed to support and implement the authentication software company’s Trust Services framework in their products.

The framework uses interfaces based on the XKMS (XML Key Management Standard) and SAML (Security Assertions Markup Language) open standards to enable multiple services access and to insulate applications from the complexities of establishing trust relationships. Verisign says that by integrating the framework with web services vendors’ platforms, it will remove “the complexity and confusion from web services-enabled enterprises”.

The company will also release a set of developer tools for programmers that want to access the company’s digital identity, authentication, authorisation and transaction services for use in in-house projects. “We haven’t concentrated a lot on the developer community in our history,” says Anil Pereira, senior vice president and spokesman for the Mountain View, California-based company. “But now you need to be a developer-focused company and have developer-focused efforts, and that’s why we moved forward in this direction..”