Mots-clés : identité numérique

This White Paper explores key concepts of identity management, places these concepts within their business, personal, and technical perspectives, and proposes a set of steps to be taken by The Open Group to serve as a change agent promoting the resolution of industry-wide impediments to interoperable identity management solutions.

The key concepts explored are trust, authentication, provisioning, authorization, and directories. The issue of trust is explored in terms of its intuitive and historical perspectives, along with the relationship between trust and risk. These concepts are then placed within an information technology (IT) perspective with discussions of IT trust services, delegation of authority, and informed consent. The issue of authentication is explored in terms of identity, relationships, affiliations, profiles, and roles, and is discussed in the context of assuring both verification and timely revocation. Provisioning is the stage at which trust gets translated into the notion of authority, and is explored in terms of a logical lifecycle progression in a business environment. The concept of authorization is explored from the perspectives of managing the permissions associated with IT resources and appropriately integrating this function with identity management. Finally, directories are examined in terms of their roles as data repositories, publication vehicles, and decision points.

Following the discussion of key concepts, this paper examines identity management from various perspectives, including business, security, personal, and technical. The business value of identity management is discussed, both in terms of measuring the investment in identity management and of assessing the risks of either implementing an identity management system or choosing not to do so. In terms of security, identity management is presented as a potential business control that can be implemented to protect business assets. To present the personal perspective, this paper explores various aspects of individual concern, including the role of people individually and as participants in larger social contexts. Finally, technical issues are explored. These issues include the notion of core identity, a framework for identity management, and various issues related to hardware, software, and standardization activities.

The paper concludes by setting forth an action plan by which The Open Group can serve as a change agent for the industry. Proposed actions include the publication of an architecture guide, development of certification programs, and focused coordination with governmental agencies and international standards bodies.
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