Liberty Alliance Project adds 11 new members committed to creating an open network identity standard, plans to release first set of specifications by mid-year

San Jose, Calif., RSA Conference - February 20, 2002 - The Liberty Alliance Project, a group committed to developing and deploying open specifications for network identity, yesterday announced the addition of 11 companies as new members. The Liberty Alliance also announced plans to release initial specifications for decentralized user authentication by the middle of this year.

The new members announced were: ActivCard, Catavault, EarthLink, EDS, Nextel, OneName Corp., PricewaterhouseCoopers, Register.com, SchlumbergerSema, VeriSign, Inc. and Visa International.

"The Liberty Alliance is committed to creating an independent, open standard for user identity that puts the user first," said Eric Dean, chairman of the Liberty Alliance Management Board and chief information officer of United Airlines. "This can be accomplished by making it clear to users how their personal information is being used, giving them control over how it is handled, and providing the convenience that will result from companies working together."

The new members join the Liberty Alliance founders (please see end of the release for a list of the founders) and previously announced members, which include Bank of America, Deloitte & Touche, Entrust, Fidelity Investments, Gemplus, Cisco Systems, Intuit, Novell and Sabre, bringing the total number of companies now involved in the Liberty Alliance to 38.

The first phase of the Liberty Alliance's specification will provide decentralized authentication between online services and leverage best-of-breed security standards to help ensure the secure exchange of data. Further details regarding development of the group's specification will be provided in the coming months.

By developing an open, decentralized specification for network authentication, the Liberty Alliance will help enable businesses and consumers alike to efficiently and securely conduct online transactions. The creation of a management board and the involvement of multiple independent corporations will help ensure that the defined specifications represent the best interests of both consumers and business users.

About the Liberty Alliance Project
The Liberty Alliance Project (www.projectliberty.org) is an alliance formed to create open, federated, single sign-on identity specifications for the digital economy via any online device. Membership is open to all commercial and non-commercial organizations.

Founding members include: American Express, AOL Time Warner, Bell Canada, France Telecom, General Motors, Global Crossing, Hewlett-Packard Company, Mastercard International, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Openwave Systems, RealNetworks, RSA Security, Sony Corporation, Sun Microsystems, United Airlines, Vodafone and a major commercial bank.

Company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Media Contact:
Michele Cerza
Ketchum PR for Liberty Alliance
+1-650-622-3227
michele.cerza@ketchum.com