My article A JSON-Based Identity Protocol Suite has been published in the Fall 2014 issue of Information Standards Quarterly, with this citation page. This issue on Identity Management was guest-edited by Andy Dale. The article’s abstract is:
Achieving interoperable digital identity systems requires agreement on data representations and protocols among the participants. While there are several suites of successful interoperable identity data representations and protocols, including Kerberos, X.509, SAML 2.0, WS-*, and OpenID 2.0, they have used data representations that have limited or no support in browsers, mobile devices, and modern Web development environments, such as ASN.1, XML, or custom data representations. A new set of open digital identity standards have emerged that utilize JSON data representations and simple REST-based communication patterns. These protocols and data formats are intentionally designed to be easy to use in browsers, mobile devices, and modern Web development environments, which typically include native JSON support. This paper surveys a number of these open JSON-based digital identity protocols and discusses how they are being used to provide practical interoperable digital identity solutions.
This article is actually a follow-on progress report to my April 2011 position paper The Emerging JSON-Based Identity Protocol Suite. While standards can seem to progress slowly at times, comparing the two makes clear just how much has been accomplished in this time and shows that what was a prediction in 2011 is now a reality in widespread use.
