MIT Forms Kerberos Consortium

MIT has launched the Kerberos Consortium, according to a report from the university's News Office. MIT is the originator of Kerberos, a network authentication protocol. One of the goals of the consortium is to expand it to offer data protection to a wider range of clients, including various consumer devices.

Founding sponsors of the consortium include Centrify Corp., the Financial Services Technology Consortium, Google, Stanford University, Sun Microsystems, TeamF1, and the University of Michigan. The group will also receive support from Apple.

"By establishing the Kerberos Consortium, MIT seeks to permit Kerberos to continue to grow and develop as a stable and universal 'single sign-on' mechanism for the users of modern computer networks," said Stephen Buckley, who's heading up the consortium as executive director, in a statement released by MIT. "The Consortium will provide a mechanism to permit greater industry participation in the funding and development of Kerberos, and thus allow it to evolve into the universal 'single sign-on mechanism' users need but do not yet have."

The group said it foresees Kerberos becoming "as ubiquitous as TCP/IP-based networking itself" in order to protect businesses and consumers from everything from data breaches to phishing.

To this end, the group plans to "implement the solutions it promotes in the form of open source reference implementations that can be used by Consortium members within their products and organizations without licensing fees," according to MIT.

Read More:

About the Author

David Nagel is the former editorial director of 1105 Media's Education Group and editor-in-chief of THE Journal, STEAM Universe, and Spaces4Learning. A 30-year publishing veteran, Nagel has led or contributed to dozens of technology, art, marketing, media, and business publications.

He can be reached at [email protected]. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidrnagel/ .


Featured

  • minimalist bookcase filled with textbooks featuring vibrant, solid-colored spines with no text, and a prominent number "25" displayed on one of the shelves

    OpenStax Celebrates 25th Anniversary

    OpenStax is celebrating its 25th anniversary as 2024 comes to a close. The open educational resources initiative from Rice University has served almost 37 million students in 153 countries and saved students nearly $3 billion in course material costs since its launch in 1999.

  • Purdue University

    Purdue Opens Large Esports Facility

    Purdue University has opened a new gaming lounge for students training and competing in esports as well as casual gamers. The institution partnered with Dell Technologies to outfit the 2,000-square-foot-space with Alienware gaming equipment.

  • Abstract geometric pattern with interconnected nodes and lines

    Microsoft 365 Copilot Gets Expanded AI Capabilities, Collaboration Tools

    Microsoft has announced the next updates to its Microsoft 365 Copilot AI assistant, including expanded AI capabilities in individual apps, the ability to create autonomous agents, and a new AI-powered collaboration workspace.

  • glowing lines connecting colorful nodes on a deep blue and black gradient background

    Juniper Launches AI-Native Networking and Security Management Platform

    Juniper Networks has introduced a new solution that integrates security and networking management under a unified cloud and artificial intelligence engine.