SAN FRANCISCO

SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft is testing some of its new identity-based security technology in Washington state schools, where students and teachers will be able to securely access grades and class schedules, a Microsoft executive said in a keynote address Tuesday at the RSA 2009 security conference here.

The software company is working with the Lake Washington School District-- comprised of 50 schools and nearly 24,000 students in and around Microsoft's home town of Redmond--to deploy its Geneva claims-based identity platform, said Scott Charney, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group.

Students and parents will bring identification information into the school to prove children's identities, and the students will then get small notebook PCs with identity information cards on them to be used for accessing online education materials.

Microsoft announced the Geneva technology last week when it announced its first hosted security service under the Forefront brand.

A former leading federal prosecutor for computer crimes at the Justice Department, Charney left PricewaterhouseCoopers to join Microsoft as chief security strategist in 2002.

"Initially my friends laughed because I used 'Microsoft' and 'security' in the same sentence," he quipped. Microsoft has made progress since then, he added.