An identity provider (abbreviated IdP or IDP) is a system entity that creates, maintains, and manages identity information for principals and also provides authentication services to relying applications within a federation or distributed network. [1]
Identity providers offer user authentication as a service. Relying party applications, such as web applications, outsource the user authentication step to a trusted identity provider. Such a relying party application is said to be federated, that is, it consumes federated identity. [2]
An identity provider is “a trusted provider that lets you use single sign-on (SSO) to access other websites.” [3] SSO enhances usability by reducing password fatigue. It also provides better security by decreasing the potential attack surface.
Identity providers can facilitate connections between cloud computing resources and users, thus decreasing the need for users to re-authenticate when using mobile and roaming applications.[ citation needed ]
OpenID Connect (OIDC) is an identity layer on top of OAuth. In the domain model associated with OIDC, an identity provider is a special type of OAuth 2.0 authorization server. Specifically, a system entity called an OpenID Provider issues JSON-formatted identity tokens to OIDC relying parties via a RESTful HTTP API.
The Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is a set of profiles for exchanging authentication and authorization data across security domains. [4] In the SAML domain model, an identity provider is a special type of authentication authority. Specifically, a SAML identity provider is a system entity that issues authentication assertions in conjunction with an SSO profile of SAML. A relying party that consumes these authentication assertions is called a SAML service provider.[ citation needed ]
Authorization or authorisation is the function of specifying rights/privileges for accessing resources, which is related to general information security and computer security, and to IAM in particular. More formally, "to authorize" is to define an access policy during the configuration of systems and user accounts. For example, user accounts for human resources staff are typically configured with authorization for accessing employee records, and this policy gets formalized as access control rules in a computer system. Authorization must not be confused with access control. During usage, access control enforces the authorization policy by deciding whether access requests to resources from (authenticated) consumers shall be approved (granted) or disapproved (rejected). Resources include individual files or an item's data, computer programs, computer devices and functionality provided by computer applications. Examples of consumers are computer users, computer software and other hardware on the computer.
Single sign-on (SSO) is an authentication scheme that allows a user to log in with a single ID to any of several related, yet independent, software systems.
Identity management (IdM), also known as identity and access management, is a framework of policies and technologies to ensure that the right users have the appropriate access to technology resources. IdM systems fall under the overarching umbrellas of IT security and data management. Identity and access management systems not only identify, authenticate, and control access for individuals who will be utilizing IT resources but also the hardware and applications employees need to access.
The Liberty Alliance Project was an organization formed in September 2001 to establish standards, guidelines and best practices for identity management in computer systems. It grew to more than 150 organizations, including technology vendors, consumer-facing companies, educational organizations and governments. It released frameworks for federation, identity assurance, an Identity Governance Framework, and Identity Web Services.
Security Assertion Markup Language is an open standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between parties, in particular, between an identity provider and a service provider. SAML is an XML-based markup language for security assertions. SAML is also:
A federated identity in information technology is the means of linking a person's electronic identity and attributes, stored across multiple distinct identity management systems.
Shibboleth is a single sign-on log-in system for computer networks and the Internet. It allows people to sign in using just one identity to various systems run by federations of different organizations or institutions. The federations are often universities or public service organizations.
OpenID is an open standard and decentralized authentication protocol promoted by the non-profit OpenID Foundation. It allows users to be authenticated by co-operating sites using a third-party identity provider (IDP) service, eliminating the need for webmasters to provide their own ad hoc login systems, and allowing users to log in to multiple unrelated websites without having to have a separate identity and password for each. Users create accounts by selecting an OpenID identity provider, and then use those accounts to sign on to any website that accepts OpenID authentication. Several large organizations either issue or accept OpenIDs on their websites.
Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is an XML standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between security domains. SAML is a product of the OASIS (organization) Security Services Technical Committee.
Security Assertion Markup Language 2.0 (SAML 2.0) is a version of the SAML standard for exchanging authentication and authorization identities between security domains. SAML 2.0 is an XML-based protocol that uses security tokens containing assertions to pass information about a principal between a SAML authority, named an Identity Provider, and a SAML consumer, named a Service Provider. SAML 2.0 enables web-based, cross-domain single sign-on (SSO), which helps reduce the administrative overhead of distributing multiple authentication tokens to the user. SAML 2.0 was ratified as an OASIS Standard in March 2005, replacing SAML 1.1. The critical aspects of SAML 2.0 are covered in detail in the official documents SAMLCore, SAMLBind, SAMLProf, and SAMLMeta.
OAuth is an open standard for access delegation, commonly used as a way for internet users to grant websites or applications access to their information on other websites but without giving them the passwords. This mechanism is used by companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Twitter to permit users to share information about their accounts with third-party applications or websites.
Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), a software component developed by Microsoft, can run on Windows Server operating systems to provide users with single sign-on access to systems and applications located across organizational boundaries. It uses a claims-based access-control authorization model to maintain application security and to implement federated identity. Claims-based authentication involves authenticating a user based on a set of claims about that user's identity contained in a trusted token. Such a token is often issued and signed by an entity that is able to authenticate the user by other means, and that is trusted by the entity doing the claims-based authentication. It is part of the Active Directory Services. Microsoft advises using Entra ID and Azure AD Connect in place of ADFS in most cases.
OpenAM is an open-source access management, entitlements and federation server platform. Now it is supported by Open Identity Platform Community.
Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is a set of specifications that encompasses the XML-format for security tokens containing assertions to pass information about a user and protocols and profiles to implement authentication and authorization scenarios. This article has a focus on software and services in the category of identity management infrastructure, which enable building Web-SSO solutions using the SAML protocol in an interoperable fashion. Software and services that are only SAML-enabled do not go here.
Social login is a form of single sign-on using existing information from a social networking service such as Facebook, Twitter or Google, to login to a third party website instead of creating a new login account specifically for that website. It is designed to simplify logins for end users as well as provide more reliable demographic information to web developers.
User-Managed Access (UMA) is an OAuth-based access management protocol standard for party-to-party authorization. Version 1.0 of the standard was approved by the Kantara Initiative on March 23, 2015.
Token Binding is a proposed standard for a Transport Layer Security (TLS) extension that aims to increase TLS security by using cryptographic certificates on both ends of the TLS connection. Current practice often depends on bearer tokens, which may be lost or stolen. Bearer tokens are also vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks or replay attacks. In contrast, bound tokens are established by a user agent that generates a private-public key pair per target server, providing the public key to the server, and thereafter proving possession of the corresponding private key on every TLS connection to the server.
The SAML metadata standard belongs to the family of XML-based standards known as the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) published by OASIS in 2005. A SAML metadata document describes a SAML deployment such as a SAML identity provider or a SAML service provider. Deployments share metadata to establish a baseline of trust and interoperability.
A SAML identity provider is a system entity that issues authentication assertions in conjunction with a single sign-on (SSO) profile of the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML).
A SAML service provider is a system entity that receives and accepts authentication assertions in conjunction with a single sign-on (SSO) profile of the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML).