Glossary Terms: I

Identity Provider (IdP)

IT concepts

An Identity Provider (IdP) is a trusted system that authenticates users or workloads and issues cryptographically signed tokens or assertions that enable access to applications and services across federated environments. For workload contexts, IdPs establish trust through runtime environment attestation and issue short-lived, automatically-rotated cryptographic credentials using protocols like OpenID Connect (OIDC) and SAML 2.0.

Identity Federation

Identity types

Identity Federation is a security framework that enables users or workloads to authenticate once with an identity provider (IdP) and subsequently access multiple systems or service providers across different security domains without requiring separate credentials at each destination. Federation establishes cryptographic trust relationships between identity providers and relying parties through standardized protocols such as SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0, and OpenID Connect, enabling secure sharing of authentication attributes and authorization decisions across organizational boundaries.

Identity Broker

IAM concepts

An Identity Broker is an intermediary security service that facilitates federated authentication and authorization between external identity providers and internal service providers, validating identity assertions and translating them into short-lived access tokens or credentials for workload authentication across organizational and security domain boundaries.

Integration

IT concepts

The process of connecting secrets managers with other systems, applications, or cloud services to automate the retrieval and use of secrets. Secrets managers often provide integrations with popular development frameworks, deployment tools, and cloud platforms to streamline secret management.

Identity Mapping

IAM concepts

The process of correlating user identities across different identity domains or systems. Identity mapping ensures that users are consistently identified and authenticated, regardless of the authentication mechanism or system used.

Identity Governance and Administration (IGA)

IAM concepts

IGA is the framework and processes used to ensure that the right individuals and machines have the appropriate access to technology resources. It integrates identity lifecycle management (provisioning, deprovisioning) with governance processes (e.g., auditing, role management, policy enforcement) to ensure compliance, security, and efficiency in managing identities.

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

IAM concepts

A framework for managing and controlling access to resources, systems, and data based on the identities of users, machines, or services.