Higgins provides three types of identity solutions:
First, it provides multi-platform “identity selector” applications that end-users can use to sign-in to web sites and systems that are compatible with the emerging user-centric “Information Card”-based (or “i-card”-based) approach to authentication. This approach promises people fewer passwords, more convenience, and better security.
The heart of the Higgins user experience is the i-card - a new, graphical way to refer to a collection of identity information that you might wish to send to a website or program. The goal of Higgins is to shift as much control as possible over these i-cards to you. Higgins uses i-cards to unify and standardize identity interactions regardless of the underlying protocol or data source. You can, for example, use them to register and log into applications and websites; exchange them with friends and communities; share them with social networking applications and services; and even build your own applications for them.
Technology built on this framework could allow users to login to their bank account with a secure authorization key, that would be automatically freshly generated for each visit. Users wouldn’t need to remember or write down passwords, which can also be long and complex enough to be secure. Additionally, this same interface also could allow users to sign into their favorite wiki or blog with just one click.
Second, it provides complete “identity provider” web services as well as the “relying party” code necessary to enable websites and systems to be information card- and OpenID-compatible. Software developers can incorporate this "relying party” code into their applications to make it easier for their users to login to their site.
Third, it implements the Higgins Global Graph (HGG) data model and the Higgins Identity Attribute Service (IdAS). Developers now have a framework that provides an interoperability and portability abstraction layer over existing “silos” of identity data. For the first time, IdAS makes it possible to “mash-up” identity and social network data across highly heterogeneous data sources including directories, relational databases, and social networks.
Higgins is an open source Internet identity framework designed to integrate identity, profile, and social relationship information across multiple sites, applications, and devices. Higgins is not a protocol, it is software infrastructure to support a consistent user experience that works with all popular digital identity protocols, including WS-Trust, OpenID, SAML, XDI, LDAP, and so on.
Higgins consists of a number of building block components . For example, the IdAS can be extended by context providers: plug-in modules that enable Higgins to read and write data from local or remote data sources such as registries, websites, directories, applications, social networks, email and IM systems, etc. See solutions for a complete list of the solutions can be created using Higgins components.
