1 Executive Summary

This guide to implementing decentralized identities in the organization begins with the Identity Fabric. The Identity Fabric is a concept which organizations can follow to architect the ability to manage the access of everyone and everything to every digital service.

The traditional network perimeter of the organization is disappearing, causing a fundamental shift in the way security is implemented in an organization. Employees are working from varying locations, on varying devices, accessing numerous applications within the organization or in the networks of partners, suppliers, or customers. They need digital identities and dynamic access management to work and interact safely inside and outside of the organizational network. Consumers require more defined relationships and identities to accompany them. Devices do more and more critical work, and must have unique identities as well to differentiate and maintain them. Therefore, identity has become an essential security perimeter. An identity-driven security model is needed, what KuppingerCole Analysts call the Identity Fabric.

Because the Identity Fabric describes a set of connected enabling IT components that work together as a single entity rather than a concrete tool, there are infinite possible implementations of an Identity Fabric. Decentralized identities offer compelling advantages for organizations to benefit from increased identity assurance levels, interact securely and with higher confidence with partners, suppliers, and other ecosystem members, and reduce the administrative load during onboarding or ongoing verification and/or validation of credentials. This guide supports organizations by showing how decentralized identity can fit into an Identity Fabric, exemplified in the KuppingerCole IAM Reference Architecture.