An interesting area that could benefit from identity federation technology is the world of hosted applications. Increasingly, companies are relying on outsourced applications to support their business, including in areas such as CRM, HR, Supply-Chain management, etc. Corporations want to ensure that when their employees access these remote applications, that they are simply using their local security credentials (e.g. their Windows or LDAP Network login) rather than having to create and self-manage dozens or more remote Web applications. Right now, enterprises are exposed to a significant risk of identity theft and fraud -- for example, if an employee leaves a company (or is asked to leave, as is more common these days), the company has no way to de-provision or revoke the credentials from all of the external hosted applications that the employee uses from their Work computer. This is just one of many drivers and forms of identity networks made possible by protocols such as Liberty, SAML and WS-Federation. PingID has put together a nice summary of the various Topologies of Identity Federation.
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