The design of the Kerberos protocol began in the early 1980s as part of MIT's Project Athena. Since then, the initially deployed protocol version, Kerberos 4, has been replaced by Kerberos 5, which is undergoing standardization in the IETF. In 2007, the MIT Kerberos Consortium was formed as a way of obtaining funding and resources for the ongoing improvement of Kerberos.
