My colleague Paul Squires posted a comment about Identity Provider vs Identity Verifiers which Johannes Ernst has commented on here.
Whilst I agree with the point that both Paul and Johannes have raised, my concern is the different terminology used for the same thing. To quote Johannes:
“However, the same (or even better) trustworthiness can be accomplished by the “verifier” model (using Paul’s term, at NetMesh we use the term “third-party confirmation”)”
This seems to be the problem with a number of terms used not just within the identity space (although it seems particularly prevalent there) but in IT in general.
Here at the Identity Gang we are working on a Lexicon of terms and definitions to try and resolve this. However, at the moment it seems that semantics are holding up the progression with people interpreting the same term in 101 different ways. While this is happening even within the discussions among the industry experts, how do we expect the average user to understand what we are trying to say.