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The Chain of Digital Trust: What Actually Happens After You Log In
The Digital Trust Series | 2 of 4
Authentication looks like a moment. Digital trust is a chain, and chains have an inconvenient property: every link matters.
Think about entering a secure office building. You show identification at the entrance, your identity is verified, and you receive a badge. You do not then produce your driver’s license for the elevator, again at the conference room, and once more before using the coffee machine. The building has taken one authentication event and converted it into something other systems can recognize.
Modern digital identity operates on a similar principle, although the architecture is considerably more complex and the coffee machine, for now, usually remains outside the identity perimeter.
After you authenticate to a digital service, the password, passkey, biometric, or second factor may no longer be the mechanism other systems use to decide whether to trust you. Instead, an identity provider can issue a token or assertion. Another application accepts that token. An authorization service determines what the identity is allowed to do. APIs and cloud services rely on those decisions.
