“IT Security and Privacy - A framework for identity management - Part 1: Terminology and concepts,” International Organization for Standards , Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Subcommittee SC 27, May 2019, https://www.iso.org/standard/77582.html .
Reviewer: Corey Scholefield
ISO/IEC 24760-1:2019 provides an introduction to the vocabulary of the identity management space, with definitions of key terms in common usage within the community. Under review is the 2 nd edition of the document, revised for 2019-May.
As stated in the introduction to the document:
The goal of this document is to specify the terminology and concepts for identity management, in order to promote a common understanding in the field of identity management.
According to its abstract:
It is applicable to any information system that processes identity information.
The document supports the goal by offering brief definitions of community-standard terms, such as:
identity
attribute
identifier
principal
identity-proofing
While the tone of the document is slightly academic, the definitions themselves:
are written using terms familiar to English speakers;
include other terms that appear in the document, with convenient links to access their definitions easily;
include some examples to illustrate the usage of the term or to illustrate the concept.
This document only includes terminology, concepts, and brief definitions and outlines. It is intended to be used as reference material.
The authors have made some effort to ensure that these definitions can be applied to a broad set of use cases, i.e., definitions of identity for use within human and non-human (device) contexts. This treatment keeps some of the coverage at a high level, causing the supporting examples to be quite helpful for providing a real-world abstraction of some concepts. That being said, this reader would have appreciated a few more examples to help support some of the definitions.
The article only contains one figure, which is supportive of the concept it depicts. The document could be improved by using more illustrations to outline concepts.
This document intends to provide authoritative definitions of terms and concepts, so other documents probably use this one as a reference document. The bibliography section is excellent and provides links to many other foundational documents in the contemporary identity-management space. Many of those references are freely available for download.
A reader who needs a basic introduction to the common terms included in this document will find this material very helpful, as the terminology is very relevant in contemporary identity-management conversations.
The seasoned reader will also find this a useful reference document but may also wonder about omitting terms such as persona , account , or authorization . It could be that these terms might not fall within the strict scope of identity management that the authors wished to cover in this document. Instead, those terms may fall under the category of access management, a connected but separate body of information security knowledge.
The document does not support any treatment of identity in a social science concept, so the definitions should be taken as they apply to identity management in technical use cases.