An identity provider (abbreviated IdP) is a system entity that creates, maintains, and manages identity information for principals while providing authentication services to relying party applications within a federation or distributed network.
An identity provider offers user authentication as a service. Relying party applications, such as web applications, outsource the user authentication step to a trusted identity provider. Such a relying party application is said to be federated, that is, it consumes federated identity.
An identity provider is "a trusted provider that lets you use single sign-on (SSO) to access other websites." SSO enhances usability by reducing password fatigue. It also provides better security by decreasing the potential attack surface.
Video Identity provider
Types of identity providers
SAML identity provider
The Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is a set of profiles for exchanging authentication and authorization data across security domains. In the SAML domain model, an identity provider is a special type of authentication authority. Specifically, a SAML identity provider is a system entity that issues authentication assertions in conjunction with an SSO profile of SAML. A relying party that consumes these authentication assertions is called a SAML service provider.
OpenID provider
OpenID Connect (OIDC) is an identity layer on top of OAuth. In the domain model associated with OIDC, an identity provider is a special type of OAuth 2.0 authorization server. Specifically, a system entity called an OpenID Provider issues JSON-formatted identity tokens to OIDC relying parties via a RESTful HTTP API.
Maps Identity provider
Examples of IdPs
- Ping Identity: On-Prem and Cloud Based IDP (and SP) for Enterprise, OIDC/SAML/OAuth
- Cierge: Open source, provides email-based OIDC passwordless authentication
- Keycloak: Open source, Java-based OIDC/SAML IdP
- Auth0: Commercial OIDC IdP
- Gluu: Commercial OIDC/SAML IdP
See also
- Federated identity
- Identity management
- Identity management system
- SAML identity provider
References
Source of article : Wikipedia