Three Pillars of Trust: Privacy, Identity Management and Compliance

In this paper we present details of a critical requirement of many systems, namely, trust. Trust is one of the oldest issues that has taken a new incarnation with advent of the Internet. In the context of the Internet and the scientific and commercial applications it has enabled, definition of trust stands to be rewritten and reviewed. Our research indicates that privacy, identity management, and compliance form the three pillars of trust. Privacy is extremely important to people, and governments have enacted laws to guard privacy. Organizations are working towards complying with privacy regulations. Identity management has been leveraged to provide the compliance. In this paper we present general concepts related to privacy, identity management and compliance to regulations. We will provide a comprehensive coverage of identity management concepts. Identity management cannot be discussed without privacy and compliance context. We introduce privacy and compliance concepts along with some representative laws. Stakeholders of identity management and related concepts span almost the entire spectrum of information technology users from hospitals, research labs, universities, government agencies to commercial business including financial institutions.