Persönliches digitales Identitätsmanagement: Untersuchung und Entwicklung von Konzepten und Systemarchitekturen für die kontrollierte Selbstdarstellung in digitalen Netzen

Digital identity management helps users and service providers to manage, control and transmit personal data within digital communication systems. The diversity of these complex tasks that always involve security issues, is currently distributed on many different applications and systems. Digital identity management ties these tasks into one single concept for a system level component which can be utilized by other communication applications. A common user interface helps with the management of the information as well as with the transmission of personal data to communication partners. In contrast to organisational, identity management personal identity management puts the user into control of his data. This influences both the system architecture and the possible application context. Nevertheless, both share many concepts and mechanisms which will be considered conjointly in this work. First the fundamental concepts of digital identity management are explained, which leads to definitions of identity, identity management and identity management systems. Then a classification of identity management systems is introduced. It differs from former approaches by considering the intention and thereby the target group of the system. With it, the functional differences between organisatio-nal and personal identity management systems become apparent. After applying this classification to important identity management systems which are currently developed and even deployed by commercial industry and research, it becomes clear that there is a gap: there is no personal digital identity management system which concentrates on self-portrayal instead of data security. This leads to this works main goal: the development of a concept for self-portrayal oriented digital identity management. A prototype following this concept is also introduced. Practical examples show how the prototype is used and what difference it makes to existing communication systems. Finally, the system is classified itself and its position in the field is elaborated.