Fed-Ed Dec 08: Updates on Federations

1. Fed-Ed Dec 08:Updates on Federations Dr. Ken Klingenstein, Senior Director, Middleware and Security, Internet2 Technologist, University of Colorado at Boulder

2. Topics • Internet identity update • Technology updates • ISOC, IETF “Identity, Trust and the Internet” • Privacy and its implications for federation • Federations • US • InCommon and Soup • Planning the future of InCommon • Liberty Alliance, International • Applications update • Collaboration apps • Open source kumbaya

3. Internet identity • Federated identity • Enterprise centric, exponentially growing, privacy preserving, rich attribute mechanisms • Requires lawyers, infrastructure, etc • User centric identity • P2P, rapidly growing, light-weight • Marketplace is fractured; products are getting heavier to deal with privacy, attributes, etc. • Unifying layers emerging – Cardspace, Higgins

4. Federated identity • Convergence around SAML 2.0 – even MS • Exponential growth in national and international R&E sectors • Emerging verticals in the automobile industry, real-estate, government, medical • Policy convergence for LOA, basic attributes (eduPerson), but all else, including interfederation, remains to be developed • Application use growing steadily • Visibility is about to increase significantly through end-user interactions with identity selectors and privacy managers

5. User-centric identity • Driven by social networking {Facebook, MySpace, etc} and {Google, AOL, MSN}, growing rapidly • Relatively lightweight to implement for both application developers and identity providers • Separates unique identifier and trust (reputation systems, etc.) • Fractured by lack of standards, vying corporate interests, lack of relying parties, etc. • OpenId, Facebook Connect, Google Connect, AOL

6. Unifying the user experience • Among various identity providers, including P2P, self-issued, federated • Need to manage discovery, authentication, and attribute release • Cardspace, Higgins, uApprove, etc. • Consistent metaphors, somewhat different technical approaches • Starting to deploy • Integrating enterprise and social identity

7. Trust, Identity and the Internet • ISOC initiative to introduce trust and identity-leveraged capabilities to many RFC’s and protocols • Acknowledges the assumptions of the original protocols about the fine nature of our friends on the Internet and the subsequent realities • http://www.isoc.org/isoc/mission/initiative/trust.shtml • First target area is DKIM; subsequent targets include SIP and firewall traversal

8. Privacy • A broad and complex term, like security, encompassing many different themes • An important privacy issue - personal data release • What is personal data? • Release a function of national, EU, and local policy • International transactions common and complex • Roughly separates into “required for transaction” and “needs consent”

9. EU Privacy Laws • Art 29 WG overarching but lots of confusion below • IP address • EPTID – a non-correlating, opaque but persistent identifier • For privacy and state – e.g. searches, web blogs • Critical to federated privacy

10. Some UK – EU recommendations Identity Providers should • Construct pseudonymous identifier values in ways that conceal as far as possible the identity of the user, for example by using one-way hash functions and providing different values to each service provider; • Declare that they will not disclose the identity of the person to which a particular identifier value was assigned, other than when required by law to do so. • In particular, reports of misuse or other problems should be investigated by the Identity Provider, who is anyway most likely to be able to hold the user to account, and not the Service Provider. Service Providers should • Not collect personally identifying information from a user who was otherwise only identified by a pseudonymous identifier; • Not seek to obtain information linking a pseudonymous identifier to a user from any other source; in particular they should not aggregate information collected from different services; • Provide evidence to Identity Providers to permit them to investigate and deal with any misuse or other problem in the use of the service.

11. Federation Update • R&E federations sprouting at national, state, regional, university system, library alliance, and elsewhere • Federated identity growing in business • Many bilateral outsourced relationships • Hub and spoke • Multilateral relationships growing in some verticals

12. R&E Federation Killer Apps • Content access – Elsevier, OCLC, JSTOR, iTunes • Government access – NIH ERA, CTSA, soon NSF and research.gov • Access to collaboration tools – wikis, moodle, foodle • Roaming network access • Outsourced services – National Student Clearing House, student travel, plagarism, testing, travel accounting • MS Dreamspark

13. InCommon • Over 118 members and growing steadily • More than two million “users” • Most of the major research institutions • New types of members • Non usual suspects – Lafayette, NITLE, Univ of Mary Washington, etc. • National Institute of Health, soon NSF and research.gov • Energy Labs, ESnet, TeraGrid • MS, Apple, Elsevier, etc. • Student service providers • Steering Committee chaired by Clair Goldsmith of Univ of Texas; Technical Committee chaired by Renee Shuey of Penn State

14. InCommon Update • Growth is quite strong; doubled in size for the fifth year straight… • Potential size estimates (pre-interfederation) could grow > 5,000 enterprises; revenue stream…. • Overarching MoU for federal agencies to join may happen • Silver profile approved • Major planning effort on the future of InCommon now underway, including governance, community served, pricing and packaging principles, business models

15. Grist for InCommon direction setting • Comparison to other national R&E federations • Budget, basics • Strength-weakness-opportunities-threats analysis • Status of soup • Growth and expense/revenue projections • Effect of interfederation and soup on projections • Other business opportunities

16. Principles to be established by process • Community served • Business opportunities • Governance and representation • Pricing and packaging principles – membership models, working with soup, etc. • Charge by cost or charge by value • ------------- • The relationship between InCommon and Internet2

17. Federation Soup • Within the US, federations happening in many ways – state, university system, library, regional, etc • Until we do interfederation, and probably afterwards, federations will form among enterprises that need to collaborate, regardless of their sector • Common issues include business models, legal models, LOA and attributes, sustainability of soup • Overlapping memberships and policy differences creates lots of complexity in user experience, membership models, business models, etc. • One workshop in, so far… • https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/FederationSoup/Home

18. Liberty Alliance • A locus for federation discussions • eGov • IAAF • New Interfed SIG soon to start • Dealing with policy aspects of Interfed • Reaching out across sectors • Trying to walk the walk as well – multifederated wiki for discussions

19. International federations • More than 25 national federations; • Several countries at 100% coverage, including Norway, Switzerland, Finland; communities served varies somewhat by country, but all are multi-application and include HE • UK intends a single federation for HE and Further Education ~ tens of millions of users • EU-wide identity effort now rolling out - IDABC and the Stork Project (www.eid-stork.eu) • Key issues around EU Privacy and the EPTID • Some interfederation – Kalmar Union and US-UK

20. REfeds meeting • Utrecht Dec 4-5 • All federations reporting tipping point phenomena • Key issues include building the business, communities served, attribute development, interfederation, application integration, working with Liberty Alliance, international privacy, etc • Integration with e-Science, CLARIN, etc. • http://www.terena.org/activities/tf-emc2/meetings/12/index.html

21. Next Steps for the R&E federation community • Learning the business of federation -REfeds • Attributes redux - ? • LOA – Liberty IAAF • Application enablement – MACE, TF-EMC2, etc • Short-term metadata aggregation -? • Long-term dynamic metadata development – EMC2 • EGov – Liberty eGov SIG • Support of virtual organizations and collaborations - REfeds • Outreach to emerging R&E feds – REfeds • Outreach to other sectors - Liberty

22. More next steps • Federated operator practices standards – Liberty (but where) • Common member-federated operator agreement – IETF/ISOC • Common member operational practices statement – IETF/ISOC • Interfederation – Liberty Interfed SIG • Technical common standards – EMC2 • Attribute mapping, attributes into English, standard approaches to InfoCard, uApprove, etc.

23. Collaboration and Federated Identity • Two powerful forces being leveraged • the rise of federated identity • the bloom in collaboration tools, most particularly in the Web 2.0 space but including file shares, email list procs, etc • Collaboration management platforms provide identity services to “domesticated” applications that externalize their identity management dimensions to an general identity/group/privilege/etc repository (LDAP, MySQL, etc.) • Results in user and collaboration centric identity, not tool-based identity • COmanage is a collaboration management platform, supported in part by a NSF OCI grant, being developed by the Internet2 community, with Stanford as a lead institution

24. COmanage • COmanage can provide authentication and authorization services (group membership, privilege management, etc) to apps • Domesticated applications currently include wiki, listproc, Jira, Subversion, Al Fresco. Soon to add audioconferencing, IM and chat rooms, EC2, Fedora, web-based file share, etc. • Can be launched as an image in the Amazon cloud. • Not “collaboration in a box”. More collaboration in a fully permeable membrane. The “stand-alone” can be readily replumbed to be completely integrated into enterprise, federated or other attribute ecosystems as they develop • Uses Shibboleth and Grouper and…

25. Integration with Open Source Efforts • Federated versions of Fedora and DSpace abound; domesticated versions to come • Sakai, Moodle, etc also federated • Kuali and Rice/KIM are under active discussion • Asterisk, Openwiki, other collaboration tools