Identity Broker

From Forge

Think of an Identity Broker (i-broker) as a bank for your Digital Identity. Your Digital Identity encompasses things that you claim about yourself, such as your name, your contact information, etc. Many applications and services (Relying Party or RP for short) want or even require this information, and it would be easier on everyone if there were an authoritative source for it. That way, you wouldn't need to retype it everytime someone asked for it, and when you needed to update your information, you would only have to do it once. An Identity Broker can handle useful services such as Data Sharing and Single Sign-On.

More importantly, an i-broker only holds your data, it does not own it, just as a bank holds your money, but doesn't own it. A proper i-broker should cede control of the data to the individual. Sadly, this is not the status quo today, but it is an achievable vision, and many smart people (in particular, the folks at Identity Commons and the Identity Gang) are working towards it.

Also known as Identity Provider (IdP).