GSA certifies SiteMinder for E-Authentication

"Approved E-A Technology Provider List"

Officials at Computer Associates International announced today that their SiteMinder 6.0 software has been certified by the General Services Administration's E-Authentication Interoperability Lab and approved for use by federal agencies participating in GSA's E-Authentication initiative.

The addition of CA's SiteMinder to the approved providers list will give federal agencies a choice among 10 companies' identity management software when they offer e-government services.

Companies are added to the GSA list after passing interoperability tests based on compliance with Security Assertion Markup Language Version 1.0, which offers a technical basis for managing and exchanging identity credentials such as digital certificates and passwords.

Over time, federal civilian agencies are expected to offer Internet access to as many as 7,000 applications under the GSA's E-Authentication initiative, said Matthew Gardiner, product marketing manager at Computer Associates. The initiative provides the supporting technology for verifying online that users are who they say they are and for authorizing access to specific government applications.

Gardiner said Agriculture Department officials who use the SiteMinder software urged Computer Associates officials to seek certification for the software so that USDA can bring some of its applications online under GSA's E-Authentication program.

"GSA is doing all the right things," Gardiner said. "It's non-trivial to coordinate the activities of the U.S. government on anything, and this is no different."