The increasingly common separation of the user from the systems requiring access is an inevitable by-product of the decentralization brought about by the integration of the Internet into every aspect of both personal and business life.
It can increase security and lower risk by enabling an organization to identify and authenticate a user once, and then use that identity information across multiple systems, including external partner websites.
And lastly, it can drastically improve the end-user experience by eliminating the need for new account registration through automatic "federated provisioning" or the need to redundantly login through cross-domain single sign-on.
[9] Identity federation can be accomplished any number of ways, some of which involve the use of formal Internet standards, such as the OASIS Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) specification, and some of which may involve open-source technologies and/or other openly published specifications (e.g. Information Cards, OpenID, the Higgins trust framework or Novell's Bandit project).
[10] In the United States, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), through the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, has published a building block white paper in December 2016 on this topic[11] The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) is a government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services.
FedRAMP enables Agencies to rapidly adapt from old, insecure legacy IT to mission-enabling, secure, and cost-effective cloud-based IT.
[12] Digital identity platforms that allow users to log onto third-party websites, applications, mobile devices and gaming systems with their existing identity, i.e. enable social login, include: Here is a list of services that provide social login features which they encourage other websites to use.