A Comparison of Technologies

So let’s take a look at the different technologies. We’ve covered three technologies, all of which do similar but different things. And they tend to be used in different ways. So we have a SAML version 2. This primarily deals with enterprise authentication and authorization created by OASIS. And its main role is Enterprise SSO Software as a Service type deployment. It uses XML. And the standard is an Open Standard. OAuth version 2 is an authorization standard, as we’ve said. Background is in social media and Twitter. Primary deployment is in internet-based services, mobile technologies. And you see lots of links here with social media accounts, because we’re using an existing internet-based, typically an internet-based, IDP.

And the big IDP is Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Facebook. The formatting with OAuth version 2 is JSON, JavaScript Object Notation, and again, OAuth and Open Standard. OpenID Connect we said is based on Open Authorization, deals with authentication primarily, and it is now standardized and managed by the OpenID Foundation - lots of members within the OpenID Foundation again. Primary deployment is internet-based services. Format, as you’d expect arising out of Open Authorization, is JSON. And the standard type is open, it is an Open Standard. Now, all of these standards being open is helpful. This means that they are less likely to become proprietary. They have been very widely adopted partly for this reason.

So OpenID Connect and OAuth are typically used together to provide authentication and authorization. OAuth strongly links to mobile and social media platforms, partly because of that relationship with the identity providers.