MIT on September 27 announced the launch of the Kerberos Consortium, embarking on an ambitious mission to create a universal authentication platform to protect the world's computer networks.

"We foresee a day when Kerberos-based authentication and authorization will be as ubiquitous as TCP/IP-based networking itself," said Sam Hartman, chief technologist for the Kerberos Consortium. "We want to make Kerberos more useful and available than ever before."

A primary objective of the Consortium is to implement open source reference solutions that can be used by Consortium members within their products and organizations without licensing fees.

Hartman noted that if Kerberos were available on mobile devices, it would be more attractive in the health care industry as a mechanism for securing privacy of health records.

Although not mentioned, Kerberos could also further secure school records and online transmissions, including from mobile PCs and their yet unreleased off-spring.

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