Marrying Heterogeneous Circles of Trust: No Silver Bullet Yet
Abstract
Numerous business and state-owned entities assert the need of secured information exchanges on digital identities based on trusted third parties. Entities trusting each other create a federation. At first, it is necessary for them to formalize this alliance with legal documents. In a second time, an architecture of identity federation will allow them to establish technical trust links, creating a circle of trust, most often with a public key infrastructure. The real challenge for the identity federation domain is the interoperability of information systems thanks to normalized and standardized protocols, that is to say, realize interconnection of circles of trust.