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IAM concepts

Identity and Access Management (IAM) concepts cover the policies, processes, and tools used to manage digital identities and regulate user access to resources. Key IAM principles include authentication, authorization, provisioning, and least privilege. Effective IAM ensures that the right users have the right access at the right time.

Categories:
AI/MCP Concepts
IAM concepts
Identity types
IT concepts
NHI security threats
Security concepts

SPIFFE (Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone)

IAM concepts
SPIFFE is an open-source framework for providing secure, cryptographic identities to services and workloads in dynamic, distributed systems like microservices. It defines standards for identity creation, verification, and lifecycle management across different cloud and infrastructure environments.

SPIRE (SPIFFE Runtime Environment)

IAM concepts
SPIRE is the production-grade implementation of the SPIFFE specification. It is a system that manages, issues, and verifies SPIFFE identities across distributed systems, ensuring workloads are properly authenticated within microservices environments.

Attribute Assertion

IAM concepts
Information about a user’s identity or attributes provided by an identity provider to a service provider during the authentication process. Attribute assertions include details such as user ID, email address, roles, or group memberships, which are used to make access control decisions.

Trust Provider

IAM concepts
A Trust Provider is a component that verifies the identity of workloads (applications, services) using cryptographically verifiable methods, such as certificates. Trust Providers are used to ensure that only verified and trusted workloads can access sensitive resources or other services.