Digital Identity Protection - Concepts and Issues
Elisa Bertino
CS Department, Cyber Center, and CERIAS, Purdue University
bertino@cs.purdue.edu
Abstract
Digital identity management (DIM) has emerged as a critical foundation for supporting successful interaction in today's globally interconnected society. It is crucial not only for the conduct of business and government but also for a large and growing body of electronic or online social interactions. Digital identity management is usually coupled with the notion of federation. The goal of federations is to provide users with protected environments to federate identities by the proper management of identity attributes. Federations provide a controlled method by which federation members can provide more integrated and complete services to a qualified group of individuals within certain sets of business transactions. By controlling the scope of access to participating sites, and by enabling secure, cross-domain transmission of user’s personal information, federations can make the perpetration of identity frauds more difficult, as well as reduce their frequency, and their potential impact. In this talk we will first discuss basic digital identity concepts and requirements towards DIM solutions and we will overview relevant initiatives currently undergoing in academia and industry. We will then focus on the problem of identity theft and discuss an initial solution to the problem of establishing and protecting digital identity.