Skip to Main Content
Digital Identity
book

Digital Identity

by Phillip J. Windley
August 2005
Beginner content levelBeginner
256 pages
8h 26m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Digital Identity

Digital Identity Matters

At the heart of this service-oriented economy are network-based, automated transactions. Automated transactions are fundamentally different than the transactions that occur in the physical world. When I stop by the convenience store to buy a snack, I can exchange cash for peanuts. Unless the clerk happens to know me, the transaction is anonymous. In contrast, in the service-oriented economy, anonymous transactions are rare, because delivering service automatically almost always implies that you have to know something about who's receiving the service—if not their names, then at least their preferences or other attributes. This identifying information is usually transferred digitally, across the network. In a service-oriented economy, digital identity matters.

Of course when we talk about the service-oriented economy, we're not just talking about e-commerce. Note that my example with the convenience store involved a small cash purchase. But imagine the same scenario, except this time I use a debit card, credit card, or check. In any of those cases, I've invoked a network-based financial service as part of the overall transaction. Network-based services are as pervasive in transactions that occur in the physical world as they are in online interactions.

In an automated, network-based service, I have to know who you are in order to sell you access to my service. Since these services are increasingly delivered over digital networks, businesses need reliable, secure, ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Learning Digital Identity

Learning Digital Identity

Phillip J. Windley
Self-Sovereign Identity

Self-Sovereign Identity

Alex Preukschat, Drummond Reed

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596008783Errata Page