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Making ID Management Manageable: Page 4 of 8

Enter the Circle

Federation occurs when a second site or service provider joins the circle of trust. This is the process of associating a user's identity at one site with his or her identity at another. The result is a unified identity among all members in a single circle of trust, as long as the user opts in for it.

The members of the circle designate the identity provider, which typically stores the user's opt-in agreement. Even after authorizing the federation, the user still has to agree to each business or service provider association. That ensures privacy.

Of course, given the nature of the Web, you aren't really logged on to all sites at once. It's more like a single sign-on: After a user signs on to Member A, he or she doesn't have to sign on again to visit any other member of the circle. Beware, though, that if you are "Joe Smith" to Member A and "Jsmith" to Member B, you will be known throughout the circle by your logon from the first site. So if you sign on to A and then visit Member B, you'll be known on both sites as "Joe Smith." Conversely, if you sign on to Member B and then visit Member A, you'll be known as "Jsmith" to both sites during that session. This scenario also applies among business partners and inside your organization with the Liberty Alliance architecture.

Although single sign-on products have been available from vendors such as Netegrity and Oblix for some time, the Liberty Alliance standards are advancing the broader federated identity model more quickly and widely. Building a federated identity infrastructure among your business partners not only cuts overhead and simplifies ID management in-house--it also opens the door for new business opportunities within your circle of trust.