Identification and authentication models analysis

Abstract

Nowadays different processes for the users are provided with usage of digital services. Digitalization of the existing processes requires development of the user information processing systems. The system must provide user identification and authentication using registered identity data. For this task identity and access management systems are used. During the digital systems development, several models for user identity and access management systems were created. Starting from an isolated model where the service (sometimes called the registrar) generates a separate user account during the registration himself, ending with sovereign model, where after identity provider generates and gives the user his identity data, the user can register in the system himself and perform an authentication using registered data without identity provider. In some models used there exists a threat of the user authentication data theft by an adversary in order to achieve a service on behalf of the user. The problem is complicated by the fact that the switchover the digital services should not exclude their physical counterpart where an adversary also must not have an ability to use the user authentication data on behalf of the user. The paper considers identification and authentication systems according to the existing models and compares these models in terms of security properties, authentication process performance and the ease of use from each participant perspective.