Identity and access management regularly challenges users, service operators, organizations, and governments. Solutions to those challenges exist in identity management systems, which range from centralized to federated and user-centric designs. Most of the systems in use today follow one of those approaches. Self-sovereign identity (SSI) is the next step in evolving identity management systems. It uses the decentralization of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies to replace classic identity providers. Decentralization offers the possibility of realizing actual user-centric use of digital identities with a system similar to how physical ID cards are handled. This work develops a concept for self-sovereign identity management, which encompasses personal identities on the Internet and for electronic identification (eID), as well as devices from the Internet of Things and the cloud computing world. Including all of those scenarios into one concept aims to prevent the establishment of more identity silos. The reference architecture developed in this work describes a system that can be applied to all those scenarios. An essential role in preventing identity silos is establishing processes that foster interoperability. The concept shows two options: localization services, which help services interpret assertions from other identity management systems, and gateways, which connect different systems as proxies. To evaluate the concept, the Internet, IoT, and eID scenarios are implemented as prototypes. They show how the concept can be applied to each use case. Additionally, it is shown how a combined scenario with all three prototypes could work.    «

Identity and access management regularly challenges users, service operators, organizations, and governments. Solutions to those challenges exist in identity management systems, which range from centralized to federated and user-centric designs. Most of the systems in use today follow one of those approaches. Self-sovereign identity (SSI) is the next step in evolving identity management systems. It uses the decentralization of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies to replace classic ide...    »