In a complex ecosystem of microservices and cloud-based resources, managing individual identities and their permissions becomes cumbersome. The need for a unified identity management system is apparent when services cross organizational boundaries or when multiple services require secure and seamless authentication and authorization.
How do you manage identity and access across a plethora of services, possibly spanning multiple organizations, in a secure and maintainable way?
The Identity Federation Pattern centralizes identity management by federating user identities. This means one service takes on the role of identity provider and other services rely on it for authentication and, sometimes, authorization. Federated identity systems commonly use standards like SAML, OAuth, or OpenID Connect for secure communications.
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Single Sign-On (SSO): Users log in once and gain access to multiple services without being prompted to log in again.
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Simplified Management: Centralizing identity reduces the number of places where credentials are stored and managed.
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Cross-Organization Compatibility: Facilitates collaborations between different services and organizations by allowing identities to be shared securely.
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Single Point of Failure: If the identity provider is compromised, it puts all relying services at risk.
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Complexity: Implementing and maintaining a federated identity system can be complex and requires careful planning.
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Local Identity Stores: Each service manages its own identity store but this increases management overhead.
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Third-Party Identity Providers: Services like Auth0 or AWS Cognito can be used, but this might raise concerns about vendor lock-in.