1 Introduction
Identity Management, also known as Identity and Access Management (IAM), must not only support the basic ability to authenticate and authorize user access to an organization’s resources but must also evolve to scale to the exponential growth of identities associated with applications, services and a diversity of endpoints.
Organizations also need to support communication and collaboration with external parties such as business partners and customers which is just as an essential technical foundation today as it has been in the past. Federation extends the reach of where identity and access controls reside and allows for the secure exchange user information that could be between divisions within organizations or between organizations in the same sector. Identity Federation configurations can be outbound allowing organizations to access external services such as SaaS applications, cloud providers or partner services. Inbound federation enables organizations to accept credentials from third-party services like partner organizations or social networking services. While some of the digital identities representing these users are managed in the organization’s internal directories, others will be federated from external Identity Providers or managed by employing Cloud Directories. So, Identity Federation is an essential technology for any organization. It allows the enterprise to deal with the external identities and the many different user populations.
As IT organizations are asked to integrate with the diversity of applications, services and the expanding number of endpoints, having the ability to be flexible in integrations is becoming essential. Whether the integrations are on-premises, hybrid or between multi-cloud environments, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are the point of interaction used between these applications, services, and other various endpoints. Having the ability to secure these APIs and support the most common protocol standards becomes imperative.
Consumer IAM began as organizations started to reach out to customers and gathering information about the consumers who are using their products & services. Through interactions with customers, they found that they needed to provide a better digital experience. This improved user experience manifested through the use of consumer's mobile devices or social networks and providing an easier onboarding experience for consumers. But they also needed to be concerned about privacy compliance such as GDPR or CCPA.
WSO2 Identity Server provides Identity and Access Management (IAM) capabilities, including Identity Federation features, that focus on addressing the challenge of handling the mounting number of identities seen in today's digital environments. Founded in 2005, WSO2 is a company based in Mountain View, CA with offices in New York, NY and a presence in the UK, Brazil, Germany, Australia and Sri Lanka. WSO2 has over 500 customers focused in North America and the EMEA regions with some presence in the APAC supporting small to large company sizes, with a good partner ecosystem. Customer deployments span banking & finance, healthcare, telecom, aerospace, automotive, government, and education as well as the information technology, service and e-commerce sectors.
