Windows Identity Foundation Explained

Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) is a Microsoft software framework for building identity-aware applications.^[1] It provides APIs for building ASP.NET or WCF based security token services as well as tools for building claims-aware and federation capable applications.^{[2] [3]}

Windows Identity Foundation is supported on IIS 6/Windows Server 2003, IIS 7/Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7. Version 1.0 shipped as a standalone product, but the product is now included as a part of Microsoft .NET Framework v4.5.^[4]

Major features

WIF has the following major features:^[5]

• It allows developers to build claims-aware applications by providing a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that help developers write code to make access decisions to applications based on claims.
• It provides templates to help developers get started building claims-aware applications.
• It provides utilities that facilitate creation of a trust relationship between a claims-aware application (sometimes referred to as a Relying on Party application, or RP), and a Security Token Service (STS).
• It provides a set of ASP.NET controls that help developers create web pages in claims-aware applications.
• It includes a utility that helps developers translate between claims and NT tokens, so that claims-aware applications can be used to access resources that require NT-Token based identity.
• It includes functionality that allows identities to be maintained across multiple service boundaries, and allows delegation of claims.
• It provides tools to help developers build custom security token services using ASP.NET or WCF.

See also

• Claims based identity
• Security Token Service

External links

• "Official Name for Geneva"
• "Windows Identity Foundation site"

Notes and References

1. https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2011/04/01/pfint_wif.aspx Improve Authentication with Windows Identity Foundation -- Visual Studio Magazine
2. https://www.infoq.com/news/2012/08/WIF/ Windows Identity Foundation Now Included in .NET 4.5
3. https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/claims-based-identity What is claims-based identity? - Definition from WhatIs.com
4. Web site: Windows Identity Foundation 4.5 Overview. Microsoft Corporation. January 24, 2012.
5. Web site: What is Windows Identity Foundation? . Microsoft Corporation . Microsoft Corporation . August 2, 2011.