How It Works

Service providers and other companies have agreed to a common set of rules for sharing identity information securely and privately. Identity federation is based on these standards. They allow multiple partners to access one personal identity on multiple sites at the same time and to authenticate that identity in order to deliver services securely. A common set of standards allows partnerships to repeat the same information-sharing processes with every partner. Otherwise, anytime a company wanted to create a partnership, it would have to create a whole new set of processes, based on the prospective partner's IT infrastructure, security policies, and other unique characteristics. This quickly becomes impossible as the number of partners increases. But with standards, the ability to partner is infinitely scalable. Using federation standards, organizations can create circles of trust in which a given provider at the center of the circle, such as an wireless provider, is surrounded by and connected to a multitude of other companies that offer value-added services the provider wants to deliver to customers.