The Venn of identity - Options and issues in federated identity management

Federated identity management has allowed the users to dynamically distribute identity information across security domains that increases the portability of their digital identities. Federated identity management is a set of technologies and processes that allow computer systems to dynamically distribute identity information and delegate identity tasks across security domains. Federated identity is a means by which Web applications offer the users with cross-domain single sign-on (SSO) that lets them to authenticate once and then gain access to protected resources and Websites. Federated identity offers solutions to many problems faced by the user in the Web environments, and SSO is the first federated capability that is added by the organizations. Federated identity is less expensive than implementing a high-quality authentication infrastructure because it offloads the authentication task to an IdP. © 2008 IEEE.