---
title: "What is an Identity?"
slug: "what-is-an-identity"
description: "What is an Identity and what does it do."
tags: ["identities", "Identity"]
updated: 2023-10-19T17:29:19Z
published: 2023-10-19T17:29:19Z
canonical: "help.claritysecurity.com/what-is-an-identity"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.claritysecurity.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What is an Identity?

## What is an Identity?

An Identity is a single entity's (employee, contractor, service account) grouping of Service Users, Attributes, and assigned Entitlements which combine into a Unified Identity defining their access to your organization's application landscape.

Example Service User object:

```
{
    "id": "d81fba0f6fc3c76d802e44d066e1693a",
    "pmi": 2020072151,
    "type": 2,
    "email": "sam.mcclarity@claritysecurity.io",
    "status": "active",
    "role_id": "2",
    "language": "en-US",
    "timezone": "America/Chicago",
    "verified": 1,
    "last_name": "McClarity",
    "created_at": "2022-07-02T07:20:08Z",
    "first_name": "Sam",
    "job_title": "Systems Engineer",
    "department": "Information Technology",
    "manager": "Alexis Silverwood",
    "last_login_time": "2023-01-30T:59:10Z",
    "user_created_at": "2022-07-02T23:21:00Z"
}
```

## What Generates an Identity

In the Clarity Security Platform, Identities are generated from your connected Applications and are combined into a Unified Identity that is directly tied to a single entity within Clarity.

---

## Creating, Modifying, and Deleting Identities

### Creating

Identities are created during the onboarding process by pulling information from all connected systems and apps which are then combined into a Unified Identity. New Identities created in a Source of Truth will create a new Identity in Clarity on the next successful sync, if one does not exist. Identities can also be manually created within Clarity.

### Modifying

Modifying identities is dependent on the policies for your organization. Changes to Identities would be made in your Downstream Applications, and reflected within Clarity on the next successful sync.

### Deleting

Deactivating or Deleting identities is dependent on your companies practices. Changes to Identities would be made in your Downstream Applications, and reflected within Clarity on the next successful sync.

**Deactivation** will deprovision the user access but retain the user information. Some organizations have audit requirements that prohibit any deletion of account information.

**Deletion** will completely deprovision the entitlements and remove the user account record from the specified application(s).

---

If you have any problems, contact your customer success team. You can also get in touch with our general support [via email](mailto:support@claritysecurity.io), open a [support ticket](https://claritysecurity.io/_hcms/mem/login?redirect_url=https%3A%2F%2Fclaritysecurity.io%2Fsupport). Our general support team is available Monday - Friday from 8:00 AM - 6:30 PM CST.

A Service User is a user, or service account, discovered by Clarity in a downstream application.

An attribute is a piece of information used to describe a service user, entitlement, or identity. Common examples include First Name, Last Name, Job Title, Department, etc.

An Entitlement is an assignable permission found in a downstream application. Common examples include licenses, groups, and policies.

A Downstream Application is any application that supplies Clarity with service users, entitlements, and attributes.