Authors:
Thomas Lenz
and
Bernd Zwattendorfer
Affiliation:
Egovnernment Innovation Center - Austria, Austria
Keyword(s):
Identification, Authentication, Identity Provider, Federation.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Applications
;
Artificial Intelligence
;
e-Business
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Government
;
Internet Technology
;
Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Society, e-Business and e-Government
;
Symbolic Systems
;
Web Information Systems and Technologies
;
Web Security and Privacy
Abstract:
Identification and authentication are essential processes in various areas of application where access to sensitive
data needs to be protected and regulated. To achieve this, usually identity-management systems are put into
place, where an identity provider manages digital identities and handles the identification and authentication
process for a service provider, which hosts the protected data. Identity management is no new topic and hence
several identity management systems have evolved over time. However, new rising requirements also demand
modifications and improvements in the field of identity management. In particular, the need for exchanging or
federating identities across domains or even borders requires new interoperable solutions and flexible identity
management architectures. In this paper we present a flexible and modular identity management architecture
which focuses on federation and interoperability capabilities based on plug-able components. Due to that,
new arising r
equirements such as the support of different authentication protocols can be easily fulfilled by
implementing appropriate plug-ins. Hence, our proposed architecture is especially applicable for high qualified
identification systems such as national eIDs and their federation across borders. We further illustrate the
applicability of our architecture by implementing it to be used as an identity provider for Austrian eGovernment
applications, on the one side being applicable for national authentications and, on the other side, in a
cross-border context.
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