Identity Landscape

= Introduction =

The Identity Landscape is a community project to create a shared living "map" of the Internet identity space -- the projects, technologies, and standards that are coming together to create an interoperable identity layer for the Internet.

Note: this page is currently a placeholder for the outcome of presentations and discussions at the Internet Identity Workshop to be held in Mountain View December 4-6. In the meantime, feel free to add any content you feel would be appropriate to building an identity landscape.

A lot of the material in the next three sections was taken, with permission, from the blog article of Johannes Ernst at http://netmesh.info/jernst/Digital_Identity/who-is-what-in-identity.html.

= Groups, Communities, Projects =

Bandit
Open-source project that builds a set of loosely-coupled components for Authentication, Authorization, and Auditing. Initiated by Novell. http://www.bandit-project.org.

Concordia
Recently initiated in the context of the Liberty Alliance (see below), Concordia will initially focus on use cases for multi-protocol interoperability. Concordia is legally part of the Liberty Alliance, I believe, but there are some talks (though no actions yet) to charter it under the Identity Commons. http://projectconcordia.org.

Higgins
An open-source project currently part of the Eclipse Foundation that develops multi-protocol software components. For example, the Higgins project is developing open-source information card selectors similar to Microsoft CardSpace for other platforms. http://www.eclipse.org/higgins.

Identity Commons
The Identity Commons is an industry association for the collaborative development of the technical, social and legal aspects of a user-centric identity layer on the internet. Many of the other initiatives listed here are chartered as working groups in the Identity Commons. Some of them are formed to accomplish a specific objective and disband shortly thereafter. Others are expected to keep going for a long time. You're already here.

Identity Gang
The Identity Gang is an invitation-based mailing list and public wiki bringing together most of the movers and shakers around identity. Operating as Working Group of the Identity Commons. http://identitygang.org.

IETF
A technical standards body for internet protocol standards. No identity-related work is currently performed there, but there are several related activities. http://www.ietf.org.

ITU-T Focus Group on Identity Management
The ITU is a technical standards body for telecommunications-related protocol standards following international standardization processes. The objective of the Focus Group is to facilitate the development of a generic Identity Management framework, by fostering participation of all telecommunications and ICT experts on Identity Management. http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/studygroups/com17/fgidm.

Kerberos Consortium
Just recently created, the MIT Kerberos Consortium intends "to establish Kerberos as the universal authentication platform for the world's computer networks.". http://www.kerberos.org.

Liberty Alliance
An industry association for the development and promotion of federated identity standards. Established in 2001, it has focused mostly on intra and inter-enterprise scenarios. http://projectliberty.org.

Oath
Organization and technology standards to define open authentication protocols. for universal strong authentication on many kinds of devices and networks. http://www.openauthentication.org.

OASIS
A technical standards body for structured information standards. The development of XRI, XDI and SAML identity protocols resides here. http://www.oasis-open.org.

OpenID
OpenID is a community and a set of user-centric identity protocols, facilitated by the OpenID Foundation. OpenID is also chartered as a working group in the Identity Commons. http://openid.net.

OSIS
Organizes and harmonizes the development of software components for the internet-scale identity system by focusing on specific interoperability use cases, and demonstrating these multi-vendor scenarios at public events. Organized as a working group of the Identity Commons. http://osis.netmesh.org.

PRIME
European research project to develop a working prototype of a privacy-enhancing identity management system. https://www.prime-project.eu.

Shibboleth
Part of the Internet 2 project, Shibboleth is an open-source project that provides Web-based Single-Sign-On. http://shibboleth.internet2.edu.

VRM
Initiated by Doc Searls at the Berkman Center at the Harvard Law School, the Vendor Relationship Management project is a community-driven effort to support the creation and building of VRM tools. The VRM project is expected to be chartered under the Identity Commons. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Main_Page.

W3C
A technical standards body for web standards. No identity-related work is currently performed there, but there are several related activities. http://www.w3.org.

XDI.org
A non-profit governing the XDI and XRI infrastructure. It also holds the XRI and XDI intellectual property. http://www.xdi.org.

= Conferences=

Digital Identity World
The main identity trade show and conference in the United States.

Identity Open Space
A series of "unconference"-style events produced by Kaliya Hamlin, Doc Searls and Phil Windley, in association with other events such as Digital Identity World. See also Internet Identity Workshop.

Internet Identity Workshop
A series of "unconference"-style workshops produced twice a year by Kaliya Hamlin, Doc Searls and Phil Windley. It is the primary face-to-face gathering of the various individuals and groups working on user-centric identity. It operates as Working Group of the Identity Commons.

IDtrust at NIST
Annual conference at NIST in Gaithersburg, MD (D.C. area). Originally a PKI academic workshop, it has morphed into a more general identity symposium. Attendees consist largely of representatives from higher education and government (both domestic and foreign). http://middleware.internet2.edu/idtrust.

= Protocols, Technology =

Yadis
Meta-data discovery framework for identity services. Now required for OpenID implementations, but useful for many other applications as well that need to discovery services from URLs or other identifiers. http://yadis.org.

= Items to Place =

This is simply a starting list of items in alphabetical order to place on the map (taken from a thread on the Identity Gang mailing list).

It's now what's left after the above.


 * i-names and i-numbers
 * OpenPGP
 * Tor

See also


 * http://openliberty.org/wiki/index.php/RelatedProjects

= Other Maps/Lists =

On the Identity Gang list, Ashraf Motiwala recommended the following:


 * http://docs.safehaus.org/display/HAUS/Id+OSS+Map is a map of identity Open Source projects.
 * http://identityaccessmanagement.blogspot.com/2005/05/vendor-list.html is a list of vendors in the identity space.

More maps


 * http://www.xmlgrrl.com/blog/archives/2007/03/28/the-venn-of-identity/ is by Eve Maler and the Liberty Alliance
 * http://identity4all.blogspot.com/2005/11/topology-of-identity-standards.html is a draft of standards and their inter-relations