Life would be a lot easier if we only had to manage our employees' identities.  But we have customers, partners, and contractors.  These external identities have the same needs for identity management as our internal identities.  In fact, they might have more needs as we know a lot less about them.

The most common scenario that we see is when a customer (the external user) registers for services with our client.  The needs are very simple: self-registration, role based access control, approval workflows, and federated single sign-on (SSO).  I'm kidding, that's not simple.

Let's start with the self-registration.  When your external user first finds your site, you will want their registration to be simple, giving them immediate access to the most public facing resources.  EmpowerID's built in forms designer allows you to have them fill out the important information and create an account in the metadirectory. 

The RBAC engine will give them the most basic of permissions at the same time that it either kicks off an approval workflow to grant more permissions or inventories another identity store (CRM for example) to determine their role and give higher privileges.

So, now you know who they are and can design some provisioning rules for other applications.  With the roles in place, you know that customers that meet certain criteria get access to different applications and resources.  Role based provisioning will automatically create accounts in these applications.

Permissions are managed with these roles too.  Polyarchical roles allow you to protect resources at a very granular level without having to create a role for every single type of external user.

Now we get to the heart of the matter, you know who your external users are, what their roles are and what access you give each role.  Now your users need to access these resources and applications.

Enter single sign-on (SSO).  You have provisioned a user account in the EmpowerID metadirectory.  This metadirectory can act as an identity provider or service provider, meaning that you can authenticate with EmpowerID and federate out to other applications or you can authenticate with other credentials, federate with EmpowerID and then with your other applications.

EmpowerID as an identity provider is incredibly powerful, it is also a Secure Token Service, allowing it to send tokens to the federated applications and giving users immediate access based on their role.  EmpowerID supports federation with SAML, OpenID, OAuth, WS-Trust and WS-Federation.

For applications that aren't federated, EmpowerID can also perform Web Access Management (WAM), sending user credentials securely and giving the same end user experience.

On the flip side, you can also federate with other identity providers such as Facebook or Twitter, giving users the ability to authenticate with credentials they use every day.  EmpowerID is still in the middle and provides role based access to the connected applications.

EmpowerID is one of the only IAM solutions on the market that manages external users' provisioning, authentication and authorization.  EmpowerID supports anonymous provisioning, allowing users to register for the services and be given a baseline of permissions.  EmpowerID can federate with Facebook, Twitter, etc. to authenticat, claim accounts in other applications and manage any attributes.

EmpowerID can then perfrom two factor authentication, device registration or identity proffing to further confirm the user's identity.  This seamless HTML5 interface works on any device allowing mobile usage and a better overall user experience.

Schedule a demonstration and see how you can manage your external identities, giving them more secure and easy access to your resources.