OATH Vision OATH ecosystem
The OATH Ecosystem is comprised of disparate companies held together by a powerful belief in the possibility of greatly enhanced security in our increasingly networked world. OATH members are creating a blueprint, in which strong authentication will enable eBusiness and provide consumers with the confidence to engage in secure transactions online.
These organizations have diverse goals and objectives, but share a common vision of a universal strongly authenticated eBusiness environment where information is shared safely, and in a trusted manner. Ecosystem companies have the foresight to see a network fabric in which each thread—devices, applications, and individual users—is strongly and constantly authenticated. They envision a technology that will be so ubiquitous, such an integral part of every transaction, that it will become an extension of every device, application, and user that touches the network in any way.
Chip and device manufacturers will reap many benefits from the adoption of OATH technologies. Your customers will discover that a common framework for authenticating devices and people across all networks will lower their total cost of ownership, and expand eBusiness market opportunities by leveraging an interoperable platform for authentication. Businesses will find it easier to scale and secure their online transactions, leading to increased efficiency and customer trust.
In addition to market expansion, device vendors will be able to deliver a higher value proposition to their customers by offering multiple choices for authentication. Collaborating with platform providers will provide new opportunities to deliver strong authentication solutions for consumers and vertical markets. Open, standards-based devices will also provide much needed strong identities for B2B applications and transactions.
Platform vendors are aware of the growing need for strong identity management solutions, driven primarily by security concerns, regulatory compliance mandates, and identity thefts across all industry verticals. Open, standards-based authentication that delivers strong single sign-on for access management will leverage an interoperable and trusted back-end, allowing business partners, customers, and remote users secure and trusted access to corporate applications.
When strong authentication standards are established, businesses will benefit as a result of increased efficiency and productivity, and platform vendors will see expanded opportunities by addressing eBusiness scalability issues. With the deployment of a shared identity model like federated identity, strong authentication will provide one of the critical components for conducting business in a trusted environment.
The adoption of a universal, strong authentication technology will facilitate the ease of use and rapid deployment of standards-compliant application systems. This will in turn minimize the operational challenges that enterprises face today, due to the proprietary nature of authentication and backend systems. Application vendors will see increased adoption of different access means such as WLAN, remote access, and B2B online collaboration, and will be able to deliver an enhanced value proposition by enabling their customers to scale the deployment of applications for increased productivity and efficiency gains.
Because security applications will be built on an open, interoperable framework, system integrators will be able to offer best-of-breed authentication choices to their customers. As an integration solution provider, you can now deliver enhanced value to your customers by focusing their efforts on solving business process issues as opposed to dealing with proprietary system integration. Integrators will be able to simplify the deployment of authentication solutions across enterprise applications, and enable the rapid deployment of a trusted, secure business environment.
