Authentication Mechanisms: Identity

Identity (Who is the subject?)

Identification asserts a unique user or process identity and provides for accountability.
Identification of an access control subject is typically in the form of an assigned user name.
This user name could be public information whether intentional or not.

A good example is that in most networks the user name that identifies the user for network
access is also the identification used as the e-mail account identifier.Hence, all one would
have to do to determine the account holder’s user name would be to know the account
holder’s e-mail address. An access control that relied on the user name alone to provide
access would be an ineffective access control. To prove that the individual who presented the
user name to the access control is the individual that the user name was assigned to, a secret
is shared between the access control system and the respective user. This secret is the user’s
password and is used to authenticate that the user who is trying to gain access is in fact the
user who owns the rights associated with the respective identification.