Microsoft is dusting off its year-old and mostly forgotten TrustBridge technology and recasting it as middleware to support federation of identities across disparate platforms, company officials said Wednesday. Microsoft said at the annual Burton Group Catalyst Conference that TrustBridge will become a security server capable of producing a user authentication and authorization token in a variety of formats. It will also facilitate the sharing of that token across corporate boundaries.
The server is a key part of Microsoft"s effort to create an identity management framework that will work across disparate platforms. Just last week, the company unveiled its retooled meta-directory server, Microsoft Identity Integration Server, and released its Active Directory/Application Mode directory as part of its push into the identity management market. "We are trying to simplify federated identity management, integrate identity infrastructures and provide a security infrastructure to support Web services applications," says Michael Stephenson, lead product manager for Windows Server.