A Taxonomy of Trust Models for Attribute Assurance in Identity Management

摘要

Attribute providers are trusted third parties in decentralized and federated identity management patterns. Service providers evaluate trust in delivered attributes with attribute assurance techniques because user properties are highly important for service provisioning. Levels of assurance define verification measures forming common ground for trust in attributes delivered by a particular provider. Beyond that, trust models that are tailored to attribute assurance in identity management enable flexible trust decisions that consider multiple attribute providers. Over time, various trust schemes for attribute assurance that address different characteristics have been proposed. We present existing models in this domain and analyze them with regard to trust scale, trust applicability, attribute aggregation, trust composition and centralization of trust. Based on the results, we create a taxonomy to arrange the trust models. Supported by this classification scheme, we devise gaps in the model coverage and propose associated future research directions.