Identity Management — A Survey

The rise of network-based, automated services has brought some fundamental changes to every organization’s activities. One of the most important changes that have occurred is the change in the way the business companies offered their products to customers. The business processes have become increasingly automated. As a result, the way in which customers create trust relationships with service providers has changed, because business transactions are conducted online. Traditional ways of establishing trust relationships between negotiating parties are no longer applicable. Windley (2005) points out that the usual trust marks that customers have relied on in the past are either missing or are easily forged. Moreover, in addition to changes in the relationship between business companies and their customers, the whole business process has become automated. The relationships with partners, suppliers, and employees have moved to the electronic world. This leads to increased risk of attacks such as identity theft and identity disclosure. Merchant web applications must be properly protected in an e-commerce environment (Stanković et al., 2012). Therefore, digital identity management needs to be properly implemented in order to elevate the overall security of the business process.