[Editors] MIT: Microsoft joins Kerberos Consortium

[Jen Hirsch]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Patti Richards, MIT News Office
t. 617.253.8923; prichards at mit.edu

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MIT Kerberos Consortium announces Microsoft Corporation
joins as a founding sponsor
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CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 31 - MIT today announced that Microsoft  
joined the MIT Kerberos Consortium as a Founding Sponsor. Slava  
Kavsan, Director of Development for Windows Core Security at  
Microsoft, will take a seat on the Executive Board, joining Jordan  
Hubbard from Apple, Paul Armstrong from Google, Wyllys Ingersoll from  
Sun, and Wilson D'Souza from MIT.

Kerberos is a network authentication protocol, originally developed  
for MIT's Project Athena in the 1980s. Over the past two decades, it  
has grown to become the most widely deployed system for  
authentication and authorization in modern computer networks.  
However, it is currently mostly available only in large enterprise  
networks. Kerberos' ability to require strong mutual authentication  
has enormous potential to protect consumers doing business on the  
public Internet from phishing and other types of attacks.

Microsoft has implemented the Kerberos protocol in a number of its  
products including Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003,  
Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008. Kerberos is also the primary  
authentication mechanism offered by Microsoft Active Directory.

"We are proud to join the MIT Kerberos Consortium as a founding  
sponsor. Microsoft has always been committed to interoperability of  
our authentication protocols, and Kerberos' universal authentication  
platform is of strategic importance for Microsoft and our customers,"  
said Slava Kavsan, Director of Development for Windows Core Security  
at Microsoft.

"Today, the majority of enterprise deployments consist of a large  
number of heterogeneous systems. Microsoft's implementation of  
Kerberos on the server side as well as the client side provides our  
customers with a smooth deployment experience, and we want these  
implementations to interoperate with others in these diverse  
environments. Kerberos' vast user base will give us a better  
opportunity to listen to customer feedback and help us continue to  
actively contribute to future improvements in Kerberos."

"Microsoft joining the Kerberos Consortium is significant," said  
Stephen C. Buckley, Executive Director. "They represent a vast number  
of users of Kerberos. It is an important step forward towards our  
common ambition to create a universal authentication platform for the  
world's computer networks."

The MIT Kerberos Consortium was officially launched in September  
2007, with the support of Apple, Centrify, Google, Sun, Stanford  
University, TeamF1, and the University of Michigan.

Since then the MIT Kerberos Consortium has also been very pleased to  
welcome Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, Duke  
University, Iowa State University, Michigan State University, The  
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Pennsylvania State  
University and The United States Department of Defense as additional  
Founding Sponsors of the Kerberos Consortium.
Microsoft will participate at the next meeting of the Executive  
Advisory Board of the MIT Kerberos Consortium, which will be held on  
April 7, 2008 at Google in Mountain View, California.

The MIT Kerberos Consortium continues to perform the software  
development, interoperability testing, and the documentation  
activities necessary to achieve its goal of ubiquitous support for  
Kerberos-based single sign-on solutions across all aspects of the  
world's communication infrastructure.
About MIT Kerberos Consortium
The MIT Kerberos Consortium was created to establish Kerberos as the  
universal authentication platform for the world's computer networks.  
Building upon the existing Kerberos protocol suite, the Consortium  
will develop interoperable technologies to enable organizations and  
federated realms of organizations to use Kerberos as the single sign- 
on solution for access to all applications and services. It will also  
promote the adoption of these technologies so that ultimately all  
operating systems, applications, imbedded devices, and Internet based  
services can utilize Kerberos for authentication and authorization.
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