SAN FRANCISCO -- Ping Identity www.pingidentity.com today announced the availability of SignOn.com beta, a new Internet service designed to provide individuals with better control, security and privacy over their identity on the Internet. SignOn.com https://www.signon.com/ allows individuals to create a single account they can use to securely sign on to any OpenID www.openid.net enabled Web site, eliminating the need for multiple usernames, passwords and profiles. It includes several features designed to secure OpenID interactions including support for Microsoft Windows CardSpace http://cardspace.netfx3.com/.

A SignOn.com account can be setup in less than a minute and provides individuals with a personalized OpenID identifier. This single account can be used for login to hundreds of OpenID-enabled Web sites. Companies like AOL, Sun, Yahoo and Wikipedia have already announced their support for OpenID.

Unlike other OpenID providers, SignOn.com includes several capabilities designed to secure OpenID interactions. One of these enhancements is the addition of Information Cards for strong authentication. With this feature, users with Windows CardSpace installed can use a personal information card to authenticate to any OpenID enabled website. The use of information cards and the Windows CardSpace client for stronger card-based authentication effectively eliminates the possibility of password phishing.

SignOn.com builds upon Ping Identity’s five years of experience in delivering highly secure Internet-scale identity management software to corporations and government agencies. Its federated identity management software allows organizations to control, protect and secure identity information they exchange with business partners. Now that individuals are discovering they also need this control and security, SignOn.com provides them a free way of doing so.

“People are just now beginning to realize the Internet is an inherently hostile environment. With organized crime syndicates focused on consumer identity theft, it’s imperative that as an industry we work together to develop the standards, tools and services which can help safeguard ones use of identity on the Internet,” said Andre Durand, CEO of Ping Identity Corporation. “The security and user-experience by which these services will give better control over privacy needs time to evolve and harden. We believe that time is now.”

Ping Identity Corp.