scim-docs/content/overview/identity-management.md

---
title: Identity Management
description : "What we speak about and in **which environment**. We must agree on some **different problematics** that exists to better understand why we use SCIM."
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---

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    <source srcset="media/small/illus-basics.svg" media="(max-width: 768px)">
    <img src="media/illus-basics.svg" alt="Illustation of the basics of identity magagment">
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#### Authentication
Who is this user ?
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#### Authorization
Is this user allowed to access this resource ?
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#### Storage
Where are user’s identity & credentials stored?
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#### Provisioning
How to manage & transfer user’s identity ?
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<img alt="illustration of losing data" src="media/illus-loose-data.svg" class="float-right w-60">

### Our environment
Our digital work environment is composed of **many applications** and web services. We want a **seamless user experience** for our free software based collaboration platform. With a **Single Sign-on (SSO)** system users get a unified login and logout experience but there is a catch.

### Our problem
Traditional SSO protocols like OpenID Connect do **not support syncing user profiles across applications.** That's means :
* **users are not created by default in all apps** (only after they have logged in at least once)
* **no mechanisms to propagate the deletion of users**
* So its **not GDPR compliant** (by default)

#### In essence
<mark>Current existing protocols are **difficult to implement or/and to use** or are **custom for specific use case** then **non-standardized**.</mark>