A practical approach to identity on digital ecosystems using claim verification and trust

Abstract

Central to the ethos of digital ecosystems (DEs) is that DEs should be distributed and have no central points of failure or control. This essentially mandates a decentralised system, which poses significant challenges for identity. Identity in decentralised environments must be treated very differently to identity in traditional environments, where centralised naming, authentication and authorisation can be assumed, and where identifiers can be considered global and absolute. In the absence of such guarantees we have expanded on the OPAALS identity model to produce a general implementation for the OPAALS DE that uses a combination of identity claim verification protocols and trust to give assurances in place of centralised servers. We outline how the components of this implementation function and give an illustrated workflow of how identity issues are solved on the OPAALS DE in practice. © Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2010.