WS-Federation (Web Services Federation) is an Identity Federation specification, developed by a group of companies: BEA Systems, BMC Software, CA Inc. (along with Layer 7 Technologies now a part of CA Inc.), IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and VeriSign. Part of the larger Web Services Security framework, WS-Federation defines mechanisms for allowing different security realms to broker information on identities, identity attributes and authentication.
Associated specifications The following draft specifications are associated with WS-Security: WS-SecureConversation WS-Federation WS-Authorization WS-Policy WS-Trust WS-Privacy
See also List of Web service specifications Web Services SAML XACML Liberty Alliance OpenID
External links WS-Federation 1.2 specification Whitepaper: Understanding WS-Federation Whitepaper: Federation of Identities in a Web Services world