Integrity of User Identities

Integrity of User Identities

User identity and entitlement issues extend beyond the portal's front door. Thus, it is important to be able to provide access to content and business services, even from third parties. Maintaining integrity of the user identity across service and company becomes a challenge.

Entrust has attacked this challenge by authenticating the user's identity and encapsulating it into a secure token. The secure token can then be passed to services, both within and outside of the enterprise, and can provide information about the user and their entitlements (Figure 15.2).

Figure 15.2. User identity integrity.

For example, a third-party sports betting provider might use the secure token to check the user's identity and decide if a user should have access to a given service. A third-party billing service might use the secure token to check the user's identity and locate his billing address. An internal legacy database might use the secure token to locate the user's account number.