# NetIDMgr Concepts

The Network Identity manager organizes and manages your credentials based on how they identify you to external services which use those credentials for authentication. To this end, it is assumed that each credential will uniquely identify the user to a service as a single principal or identity. For Kerberos, the identity is conceptually the same as the principal.

At it's core, NetIDMgr does not possess any knowlege about specific credentials that might be available for the user or how to manage them. It relies on several types of plugins to provide the information it needs, and to carry out credentials management tasks. One primary task is to identify and manage identities. These services are provided by a plugin called the identity provider. Information about individual credentials are provided by credentials providers. Other plugins may extend the functionaility of these plugins or provide additional functionality for NetIDMgr.

The following topics provider further details:

- Identity
- Identity Provider
- Credentials Provider