What is Identity?

Identity in context

Identity helps us answer a basic question: who or what are we dealing with? In everyday life, the answer depends on context. You might be a customer, an employee, a student, or an account holder. You are the same person, but each relationship involves different information, expectations, and permissions.

Digital representations

Digital systems need a way to represent those relationships. A person might be represented by an employee record, a customer account, or a profile in an application. An application, device, or automated service can also have a digital identity. These representations typically include an identifier that distinguishes the subject within a system, along with attributes that describe it, such as a name, department, or account status.

The distinction between a subject and its digital representation matters. You are not your account. Your account represents you within a particular system, and you may have many accounts across different systems. An email address can help identify an account. A password or security key can help prove control of it. Neither, by itself, describes everything about who you are.

Identity and Access Management

Identity and Access Management (IAM) brings these pieces together. It covers how identities are established, represented, maintained, and eventually retired. It also addresses how people and systems authenticate, how access decisions are made and enforced, and how access changes when circumstances change.

Understanding identity means understanding those connections: the person or thing being represented, the information a system holds about it, the evidence that supports trust, and the access that follows.

Claims and evidence

Information stored about an identity is not automatically verified. A system may know what someone has claimed without knowing whether that claim is true.

Proceed to Establishing an identity to learn more.