Identity Management

Welcome to my Identity blog. I have just (jun 2006) defended master thesis ”Digital Identity Management – Challenges and Benefits”. The evaluators think that my thesis is rather good (I’ve got very high grade - 10 for it :)

My supervisor was famous dane Dr.John Gøtze. Here follows some of the thesis’ chapters titles:

Identity and its digital representation
What is identity?
Two aspects of Identity
Three tiers of identity
Identity proof and chain of trust
Digital identity today
Challenges of DI management
Identity and security
Identity and business
Identity and privacy
Identity and technology
General motivation and Scope of Digital Identity Management

Concepts of Digital Identity
Digital Identity and Identity Management
Trust
Policy
Privacy
Digital Identity Lifecycle
Integrity, Non-repudiation and Confidentiality
Cryptography
Message Digests (Hashes)
Digital Signatures
Digital Certificates and PKI
Certificate Authorities
Identity Management processes

Authentication
Cookies
ID and Password
Challenge-Response Systems
Digital Certificates
Biometric Devices
Smart cards

Authorization
Abstract Authorization Architectures

Access Control
Responsibility for resources
The Principle of Least Privilege
Accountability versus Enforcement
Access Control Types
Mandatory and Discretionary Access Control
User-based permission systems
Access control matrix
Access-Control Lists
Digital Certificates and Access control
Role Based Access Control – RBAC
Attribute Based Access Control – ABAC
Digital Rights Management
Access Control and Service Oriented Architecture

Names and Directories

Interoperability Standards
Security Assertion Markup Language – SAML
Service Provisioning Markup Language – SPML
eXtensible Access Control Markup Language – XACML

Federated Identity

Architecture for Digital Identity
Identity Management Architecture vs. Information Security Planning
Governance and Business modeling of enterprise architecture
Identity Maturity Models and Process Architectures
Identity Data Architectures
Interoperability Frameworks for Identity
Identity Policies
Identity Management Reference Architecture
Building an Identity Management Architecture

IM situation in Denmark
Current development of Identity Framework in Denmark
The Reference Model
Administration and management
Issuing of credentials
Storing
Authentication
Authorization
Logging and control
More about the elements and other issues related to IM in Denmark

Cross-case conclusions
1. About the model
2. Authentication
3. Access control and rights administration
4. Standards, Interoperability and SSO
5. Logging and control

Putting IM into perspective

If you find theese subjects interesting, you can download complete ca. hundred page thesis as