Identity Management - History

History

Identity management (IdM) is a term related to how humans are authenticated (identified) and their actions authorized across computer networks. It covers issues such as how users are given an identity, the protection of that identity, and the technologies supporting that protection (e.g., network protocols, digital certificates, passwords, etc.).

Digital identity: Personal identifying information (PII) selectively exposed over a network. See OECD and NIST guidelines on protecting PII and the risk of identity theft.

Thus the term management is appended to "identity" to indicate that there is technological and best practice framework around a somewhat intractable philosophical concept. Digital identity can be interpreted as the codification of identity names and attributes of a physical instance in a way that facilitates processing. In each organization there is normally a role or department that is responsible for managing the schema of digital identities of their staff and their own objects, which are represented by object identities or object identifiers (OID).

The SAML protocol is a prominent means used to exchange identity information between two identity domains. Other examples are listed on the Website of this project.

Read more about this topic:  Identity Management

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
    —Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

    “Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
    —Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)

    “No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.”
    —Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)