WSO2 Identity Server

Identity and Access Management (IAM) must extend beyond basic authentication and authorization to scale with the rapid growth of identities tied to applications, services, and diverse endpoints. At the same time, organizations must enable secure collaboration with external parties—partners and customers—making identity federation a foundational capability. Federation expands where access controls can reside and supports secure exchange of identity attributes and authentication decisions across divisions, sectors, and third-party providers. Outbound federation enables access to SaaS, cloud providers, and partner services; inbound federation allows acceptance of credentials from partners or social networks. As environments become hybrid and multi-cloud, flexible integrations and strong API security become essential, since APIs are the interaction layer across systems. Consumer IAM (CIAM) adds pressure to deliver smoother onboarding and better user experiences through mobile and social identity while meeting privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA.

WSO2 Identity Server, part of the WSO2 Integration Agile Platform, provides IAM/CIAM capabilities with a strong emphasis on identity federation, provisioning, brokering, and SSO; 90% of deployments are CIAM-focused with attention to user privacy. It supports standard federation protocols (SAML2, OIDC, WS-Federation), provisioning via SCIM 1.1/2.0, and a connector ecosystem (40+ integrations). Authentication includes broad MFA options and adaptive authentication driven by contextual signals and behavior, with more advanced approaches possible via CEP/ML integrations; authentication flows can be scripted in JavaScript for agility. Authorization supports RBAC and ABAC via XACML 2.0/3.0, plus OAuth-based scoped access for federation and API security. Operational features include analytics dashboards, alerting, audit reports, token management, and microservices security using OAuth and signed JWTs. Deployment spans on-premises, cloud, hybrid, and a managed cloud model, with Docker images available under subscription support.

• WSO2 was founded in 2005.
• WSO2 is based in Mountain View, California and has offices in New York, New York.
• WSO2 has a presence in the UK, Brazil, Germany, Australia, and Sri Lanka.
• WSO2 has over 500 customers, primarily in North America and EMEA, with some presence in APAC.
• Customer deployments span banking and finance, healthcare, telecom, aerospace, automotive, government, education, IT services, and e-commerce.
• WSO2 Identity Server is part of the WSO2 Integration Agile Platform.
• 90% of WSO2 Identity Server deployments are CIAM-focused.
• WSO2 Identity Server supports SAML2, OIDC, and WS-Federation for federation use cases.
• WSO2 Identity Server supports SCIM 1.1 and SCIM 2.0 for provisioning.
• WSO2 Identity Server provides XACML 2.0/3.0 support for ABAC.

• “Identity Federation is an essential technology for any organization.”
• “It allows the enterprise to deal with the external identities and the many different user populations.”
• “Having the ability to secure these APIs and support the most common protocol standards becomes imperative.”
• “Through interactions with customers, they found that they needed to provide a better digital experience.”
• “In fact, 90% of the Identity Server deployments are CIAM focused in which support of user privacy is given.”
• “SSO is a core component used by most customers of the WSO2 platform.”
• “Adaptive authentication based on level of risk and context using environmental and user attributes and/or user behavior.”
• “Using JavaScript, this feature gives script-based control to administrators in order to make changes in a more agile fashion.”
• “Operations are given support via dashboards for security analytics and monitoring, which is another expected feature in modern IAM/CIAM solutions.”
• “Overall, WSO2 Identity server continues to improve on capabilities and takes some innovative approaches to solve some identity challenges in the market today making it a product worth being evaluated.”