Digital Identity

Digital Identity Perspectives

We usually speak of identity in the singular, but in fact, subjects have multiple identities. From our point of view, they tend to seem like different facets of our identity, but other entities have a specific view that corresponds to only a subset of those attributes. For example, my bank sees a set of attributes for me that correspond to my credit card numbers, account numbers, credit score, and so on. My employer sees a different subset that overlaps only in a few points such as name, social security number, and the one bank account I give my employer for depositing my paycheck.

My multiple identities are linked by me and little else. They represent different perspectives on who Phil Windley is and what attributes I possess. Most of these attributes are stored in various formats in myriad databases. In the State of Utah alone, there are over 250 different databases in which portions of my digital identity might be stored, depending on my interactions with the State. These multiple identities, or personas, as they are sometimes called, are tied together by a few common data elements that are used, imperfectly, as keys for accessing them: my name, my address, my social security number, and my birthday.

To make sense of all of this, Andre Durand, the founder and CEO of Ping Identity Corp. introduced the concept of "tiers of identity."^[*] Figure 2-3 shows a schematic of these tiers. At the bottom is the first tier, labeled "My Identity." Tier 1 consists ...