This chapter covers some of the core concept and technological background of IAM with topics such as, definitions of Identity, Identity Management, and different generations of IAM technologies. However, please take note that this chapter will not be providing in depth explanations of each topic because it is beyond the scope of this book.
TopIntroduction
We all agree that nowadays we are living in a hyperconnected world. We are facing a complex and extensive web of digital relationships between people, devices and things that are required to be working in secure and manageable manner. In the chapter, we provide our readers the backgrounds how an Identity and Access Management solution are built to scale and understand how billions of users, devices, services, and things are managed and protected through the relationships between them.
Firstly, we’ll provide a summary of the different views on identities, identity management, as well as an introduction to both biometric multimodal and password/token based IAM architectures and systems.
Secondly, we’ll discuss the roles of different contemporary identity management technology standards. More specifically, we’ll look into IAM technologies used in different generations:
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First Generation technologies: LDAP,Kerberos, Radius, and X.509,
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Second Generation technologies: Cross Domain Collaboration and SAML
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Third Generation technologies: OpenID and OAuth authentication
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Identity Management in the Cloud: System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM)
We’ll also discuss how different technologies are employed in the effective management of identities such as: Face Recognition Across Facial Expressions and Body Gestures, Audio and Video Motion Analysis for Detection of Spontaneous Emotions, and Biometrics beyond the Visible Spectrum.
Lastly, we’ll also discuss some of the key issues and argue why these issues are important for the successful enhancing the security of digital identities in the current Information Age.