Digital identity
The unique representation of a subject, such as a person or organisation, engaged in an online transaction.
NIST's Digital Identity Guidelines describe a digital identity as the unique representation of a subject engaged in an online transaction, where the subject may be a person, an organisation or a device. A digital identity is always established in a context, and proving it involves identity proofing at enrolment and authentication at each later use. Agentic finance adds a second subject to most transactions, the agent, whose identity must be established alongside the customer's.
Agent Minute explains this term on 8 October 2026.
Related terms
Identity proofingCollecting, validating and verifying information about a person to establish that they are who they claim to be.Identity assurance levelA NIST measure of how rigorously a person's claimed identity was proofed.Know Your Agent (KYA)Checking which agent is acting, who operates it and whom it acts for, before letting it act.Verifiable credentialA tamper-evident set of claims by an issuer, held by a holder and cryptographically checkable by a verifier.