The Strong Authentication Expert Group (SAEG) includes American Express Co., Financial Services Technology Consortium Inc. (FSTC), Oracle Corp., VeriSign Inc. and the Defense Manpower Data Center within the U.S. Department of Defense.

Roger Sullivan, a Liberty Alliance board member, said the new group will try to speed up the development of strong authentication interoperability standards, specifically for federated networks where end users can use one set of identity credentials to gain access to multiple network domains.

But Sullivan, who is a vice president of business development at Oracle, added that "the principles of what we are discussing" could also be applied in network environments that aren't federated.

For that reason, the initiative should be relevant to the retail banking industry, said Jim Salters, director of technology development and business initiatives at the New York-based FSTC. He noted that banks face a deadline of Dec. 31, 2006, for implementing stronger processes for authenticating online customers under guidelines issued last month by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council.

The SAEG's Identity Strong Authentication Framework will be designed to enable technologies such as smart cards, tokens and biometric tools to interoperate across organizations, networks and vertical market segments. The first draft of the framework, which is referred to informally as ID-Safe, is expected to be completed by mid-2006.