OpenID is an industry initiative to allow individuals to use the same username and password at many different websites. In the concept application, Gemalto and Vodafone combined the ease of use of OpenID, which does not require any software installation on the end-user’s computer, and the security of smart card-based two-factor authentication. The innovative concept provides for greater personal identity protection when accessing websites. The user has the ability to prove their identity (i.e., authenticate) by entering their username and password or using two-factor authentication leveraging a physical device (e.g., a mobile phone or a USB token). The identity application provides remote strong authentication services over IP networks, wired or wireless, to allow secure access to the federated web sites. For example, the authentication is provided by the Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC), a high performance smartcard that can host GSM SIM and 3G UMTS applications together with additional value generating applications. The identity application located in the UICC enables the end-user to access the Internet using a PC and obtain strong authentication of his/her OpenID from the UICC, which can be either located in a cell phone or in a Gemalto smart dongle connected to the internet. The identity application communicates with the UICC service using SIP (the Session Initiation Protocol, an industry standard broadly used in Voice-Over-Internet communications, in Internet chat and in other Internet Multimedia applications) to authenticate users with either a public key infrastructure (PKI) or a one-time password (OTP). „“Remote authentication is a new idea leading to great opportunities for operators, such as the possibility to offer digital signature as a service to internet providers using the secure UICC platform already present inside our customer’s mobile phones,““ said Patrick Waters, Head of Enterprise Research Programme, Vodafone Group R&D. „“We see many possibilities for its everyday use.““ Gemalto’s and Vodafone’s IDDY award was announced at CSO magazine’s Digital ID World 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Previous winners of the IDDY include Aetna, Citi, Deutsche Telekom and NTT Labs. The IDDY program is part of the Kantara Initiative, a global identity community working to solve harmonization and interoperability challenges among identity-enabled enterprise, Web 2.0 and cloud applications and services. www.gemalto.com www.vodafone.com