(January 14, 2003) - The OASIS standards consortium has organized a new technical committee to advance adoption of the Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI) for Web services and other applications. PKI serves as a foundation to enable secure e-business transactions. The new technical committee has been created within the OASIS PKI Member Section, a group formed as a result of the recent transition of the advocacy group, PKI Forum, to OASIS.

The OASIS PKI Technical Committee will serve as a global information resource for PKI. It will work to increase awareness of digital certificates as an important component for managing access to network resources, delivering secured electronic messages and conducting electronic transactions. Deliverables from the committee will include white papers, implementation guidelines, and conformance tests to promote the adoption of the PKI technology.

"We want to address the issues behind the successful deployment of digital certificates to meet business and security requirements. Our collaboration will focus on overcoming technical and integration challenges and promoting greater interoperability," explained Terry Leahy of Wells Fargo, chair of the new OASIS PKI Technical Committee. "The committee will serve as a community forum for exchanging information on using PKI and digital certificates in application-focused standards and projects, and as a mechanism for the creation of documents related to the implementation of PKI internationally."

PKI serves as a foundation for other Web services standards. The new technical committee joins the growing body of security specifications being developed within OASIS, such as WS-Security, the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), the XML Access Control Markup Language (XACML, the Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML), XML Common Biometric Format (XCBF), and the Digital Signature Services (DSS) protocol.

Participation remains open to all organizations and individuals. OASIS will host an open mail list for public comment, and completed work will be freely available to the public without licensing or other fees. Information on joining OASIS can be found on www.oasis-open.org/join.