Glossary
Federated Identity
Federated identity lets one organization's system accept an identity assertion from another organization's identity provider — a partner's employee authenticating with their own employer's credentials to reach a shared resource, for instance — instead of requiring a separate, locally managed account. This avoids duplicating identity records across organizational boundaries, along with the drift and staleness that duplication tends to produce.
Trusting a federated assertion means trusting the issuing organization's own identity practices, including how quickly they revoke access when someone leaves. That dependency is easy to overlook until the partner's practices turn out to be weaker than assumed.