FlagThis

Abstract

Access and Identity Management (IAM) federations are an important area for protecting organizational resources and permitting seamless access across multiple domains. Still, modern IAM implementations are typically faced with challenges like inconsistent authentication schemes, fragmented access control, and cross-domain interoperability. These challenges highlight the gap in the research on securing, operationalizing, and the comfort level of IAM federation systems in hybrid and cloud environments. This paper will provide a fully-fledged discussion of IAM federation, including its tools, techniques, and applications in present-day organizations. The study of ten leading IAM tools and protocols, such as Single Sign-On (SSO), Multifactor Authentication (MFA), Privileged Access Management (PAM), SAML, OAuth, and OpenID Connect, will comprise a part of the research undertaken on a qualitative comparative review methodology. They are evaluated based on the strength of security, interoperability, compliance with regulations (GDPR, HIPAA, FERPA), and usability. The results show that SAML and OAuth protocols give better assurance of security, while SSO and PAM are better in usability and governance efficiencies. The paper is helpful because it provides a simple model of federated IAM definition, illustrating both the technical advantages and drawbacks that are present today. It also argues about the ethical and data compliance implications, indicating where the future enterprise system federation models of AI should be developed.