How does a digital identity management platform perform identity mapping across systems?

A digital identity management platform performs identity mapping across systems by establishing a unified and consistent representation of user identities across multiple, often disparate, systems or applications. This process ensures that a single user can be accurately recognized and authorized across different environments, even when those environments use different identity formats, schemas, or protocols.

How Identity Mapping Works:

1. Identity Collection: The platform gathers identity attributes from various sources such as LDAP directories, databases, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, customer relationship management (CRM) tools, or identity providers (IdPs).

2. Attribute Correlation: It identifies common attributes across systems — such as email address, username, employee ID, or national ID — to correlate identities that refer to the same real-world individual. This correlation is key to creating a unified view.

3. Mapping Rules & Logic: Identity mapping relies on predefined rules or algorithms that define how identities in one system correspond to identities in another. For example, a user with employee ID “E12345” in the HR system might be mapped to user “john.doe@example.com” in the email system and “jdoe” in the internal application.

4. Federated Identity Protocols (Optional): In more advanced setups, protocols like SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language), OAuth, or OpenID Connect are used to enable secure identity federation. These allow users to authenticate once (Single Sign-On) and access multiple systems without re-authenticating, while the platform maps their identity seamlessly.

5. Centralized Identity Repository (Identity Vault): Many platforms maintain a centralized identity store or directory where mapped identities are stored. This serves as a reference point for authentication, authorization, and auditing purposes.

6. Synchronization & Lifecycle Management: The platform may also synchronize identity data across systems and manage the full identity lifecycle — including provisioning, deprovisioning, role changes, and access updates — ensuring consistency and security across all integrated systems.

Example:

Imagine a large enterprise with separate systems for HR (Workday), email (Microsoft Exchange), and an internal project management tool (Jira). Each system stores user information differently:

• Workday uses Employee ID and official email.
• Exchange uses the email address as the primary user identifier.
• Jira uses a custom username.

An identity management platform will map:

• Workday’s Employee ID “E78901” and email “alice.smith@company.com”
• To Exchange’s mailbox “alice.smith@company.com”
• And to Jira’s username “asmith”

When Alice logs into the company portal, the identity platform authenticates her, recognizes her unified identity, and allows access to all three systems based on her permissions, even though each system knows her differently.

Recommended Tencent Cloud Service:

For implementing robust digital identity management and identity mapping, Tencent Cloud offers Tencent Cloud CAM (Cloud Access Management) and Tencent Cloud Identity and Access Management (TIAM) solutions. These services help manage user identities, enforce fine-grained access control, integrate with external identity providers, and support identity federation. They are suitable for mapping identities across hybrid cloud and on-premises environments, ensuring secure and seamless access across systems.