Kantara Initiative, Inc. is a 501 c(6) non-profit industry consortium and professional trade association dedicated to advancing technical & legal innovation and trust framework operations related to digital identity management and data privacy - wikipedia 
Kantara aims to form a unified, transparent and inclusive member organization for digital identity community stakeholders.
Kantara translates to “wooden bridge” in Kiswahili (Kiswahili wikipedia), a hybrid language between Arabic and Bantu (Bantu languages), and that’s showcased in the bridge of Kantara’s logo. The name is attributed to Nat Sakimura of NRI, Kantara Board Director and Open ID (OpenID) Foundation Chair, as he spent his childhood in Africa.
In 2011, Kantara focused on serving the needs of relying parties (Relying party). Kantara did so by developing and operationalizing services for federated trust frameworks (Federated identity).
# Current Projects
As of June 2017 Kantara completed the project of incubating the ID Pro initiative. Kantara will continue to develop the Body of Knowledge for the good of ID Pro and the community. IdPro is now a 501 (c) 6 industry association for digital identity professionals.
Kantara members and non member participants continue to refine the User-Managed Access (UMA) (User-Managed Access) protocol which puts control of information in the hands of the individual.Kantara SlideShare (UMA received the 2014 Best Innovation Security Award from the European Identity & Cloud Conference).
Kantara also collaborates with Rutgers University’s Command, Control and Interoperability Center for Advanced Data Analysis (CCICADA), a US Department of Homeland Security University Center of Excellence (Homeland Security Centers of Excellence), in a Program known as KIPI (Kantara Identity and Privacy Incubator) to fund applied research and advanced development of products and services with mass adoption potential, to improve cyber identity and privacy. The outputs of Kantara's collabarative efforts to develop tools for an increasingly global trusted identity and privacy services community can be found here.Kantara "Reports and Recommendations"
# See also * What Kantara Does