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Participation in InCommon Federation ("Federation") enables the participant a federation particpating organization ("Participant") to use Shibboleth identity attribute sharing technologies to manage access to on-line resources that can be made available to the InCommon community. One goal of the Federation is to develop, over time, community standards for such cooperating organizations to ensure that shared attribute assertions are sufficiently robust and trustworthy to manage access to important protected resources. As the community of trust evolves, the Federation expects that participants eventually should be able to trust each other's identity management systems and resource access management systems as they trust their own.
A fundamental expectation of InCommon Participants is that they provide authoritative and accurate attribute assertions to other participants Participants, and that participants Participants receiving an attribute assertion protect it and respect privacy constraints placed on it by the Federation or the source of that information. In furtherance of this goal, InCommon requires that each participant Participant make available to other participants Participants certain basic information about any identity management system, including the identity attributes that are supported, or resource access management system that they register registered for use within the Federation.
Two criteria for trustworthy attribute assertions by Credential Identity Providers are: (1) that the identity management system fall under the purview of the organization's executive or business management, and (2) the system for issuing end-user credentials (e.g., PKI certificates, userids/passwords, Kerberos principals, etc.) specifically have in place appropriate risk management measures (for example e.g., authentication and authorization standards, security practices, risk assessment, change management controls, audit trails, etc.).
InCommon expects that Resource Service Providers, who receive attribute assertions from another organizationParticipant, respect the other organizationParticpant's policies, rules and standards regarding the protection and use of that data. Furthermore, such information should be used only for the purposes purpose for which it was provided. InCommon strongly discourages the sharing of that data with third parties, or aggregation of it for marketing purposes without the explicit permission [#1] of the identity information providerproviding Particpant.
InCommon requires participating organizations Particpants to make available to all other InCommon Participants answers to the questions below. [#2] Additional information to help answer each question is available in the next section of this document. There is also a glossary at the end of this document that defines terms shown in italics.
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University of California, Davis as of 1 December 2010 10 March 2011 (based on the POP version submitted 19 July 2007).
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1.3 Contact information
The following person or office can answer questions about the Participant's identity management system or resource access management policy or practice.
Name | Curtis Bray |
Title or role | Manager, Application Development & Data Administration |
Email address | clbray AT ucdavis DOT edu |
Phone | +1 530 754 6199 |
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Identity Provider Information
The most critical responsibility that a Credential an Identity Provider Participant has to the Federation is to provide trustworthy and accurate identity assertions. [#3] It is important for a Resource Service Provider to know how your electronic identity credentials are issued and how reliable the information associated with a given credential (or person) is known.
Community
2.1 If you are a Credential an Identity Provider, how do you define the set of people who are eligible to receive an electronic identity? If exceptions to this definition are allowed, who must approve such an exception?
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What subset of persons registered in your identity management system would you identify as a "Member of Community" in Shibboleth identity assertions to other InCommon participantsParticipants?
Per above, current faculty, staff and students; guest faculty and staff; visiting scholars.
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2.3 Please describe in general terms the administrative process used to establish an electronic identity that results in a record for that person being created in your electronic identity database? Please identify the office(s) of record for this purpose. For example, "Registrar's Office for students; HR for faculty and staff."
System-specific IDs are issued to affiliates on their respective systems of record (SORs). Payroll issues employee IDs to faculty and staff. The campus Student Information System, operated by the Registrar, issues student IDs to students and applicants. A small number of additional "external" SORs (e.g., University Extension, Cooperative Extension, and some of the professional schools) generate identifiers specific to their information systems.
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2.4 What technologies are used for your electronic identity credentials (e.g., Kerberos, userID/password, PKI, ...) that may be used with InCommon actionsare relevant to Federation activities? If more than one type of electronic credential is issued, how is it determined who receives which type? If multiple credentials are linked, how is this managed (e.g., anyone with a Kerberos credential also can acquire a PKI credential) and recorded?
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2.5 If your electronic identity credentials require the use of a secret password or PIN, and there are circumstances in which that secret would be transmitted across a network without being protected by encryption (i.e., "clear text passwords" are used when accessing campus services), please identify who in your organization can discuss with any other Participant concerns that this might raise for them:
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2.6 If you support a "single sign-on" (SSO) or similar campus-wide system to allow a single user authentication action to serve multiple applications, and you will make use of this to authenticate people for InCommon Resource Service Providers, please describe the key security aspects of your SSO system including whether session timeouts are enforced by the system, whether user-initiated session termination is supported, and how use with "public access sites" is protected.
The campus employs both a home-grown legacy SSO ("DistAuth") and JA-SIG CAS. Both authenticate against the campus Kerberos service. Both employ configurable session timeouts in addition to a twenty-four hour Kerberos TGT timeout. Although both SSO services offer a limited form of user-initiated logout, clients are nonetheless strongly cautioned to close browser sessions when finished. InCommon Resource Providers will authenticate via JA-SIG CAS.
2.7 Are your primary electronic identifiers for people, such as "net ID," eduPerson EPPNeduPersonPrincipalName, or eduPersonTargetedID considered to be unique for all time to the individual to whom they are assigned? If not, what is your policy for re-assignment and is there a hiatus between such reuse?
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Information in the identity database, per se, is generally not considered "public information", with respect to being available to any interested party, except as authorized for publication in the campus directory, or for conducting official university business. Some of this information may be made public per policies of the respective SORs.
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Uses of Your Electronic Identity Credential System
2.10 Please identify typical classes of applications [#5] for which your electronic identity credentials are used within your own organization?
A sampling of applications which may employ electronic credentials can be found at the UC Davis Computing Resources site.
Attribute Assertions
Attributes are the information data elements in an attribute assertion you might make to another Federation participant concerning the identity of a person in your identity management system.
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Federation participants must respect the legal and organizational privacy constraints on attribute information provided by other participants Participants and use it only for its intended purposes.
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See the policy links in section 1.2.
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Service Provider Information
Resource Service Providers are trusted to ask for only the information necessary to make an appropriate access control decision, and to not misuse information provided to them by Credential Identity Providers. Resource Service Providers must describe the basis on which access to resources is managed and their practices with respect to attribute information they receive from other Participants.UC Davis IET is not presently a Resource Provider.
4. Other Information
4.1 Technical Standards, Versions and Interoperability
Identify the version of Internet2 Shibboleth code release that you are using or, if not using the standard Shibboleth code, what version(s) of the SAML and SOAP and any other relevant standards you have implemented for this purpose.
Shibboleth IdP 2.2.1
Shibboleth SP 2.4.x
4.2 Other Considerations
Are there any other considerations or information that you wish to make known to other Federation participants with whom you might interoperate, e.g., concern ? For example, are there concerns about the use of clear text passwords or responsibilities in case of a security breach involving identity information you may have provided?
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- What might your central campus IT organization, as a Resource Provider, ask of a peer campus Credential Provider (e.g., Computer Science Department, central Library, or Medical Center) in order to decide whether to accept its identity assertions for access to resources that the IT organization controls?
- What might a campus department ask about the central campus identity management system if the department wanted to leverage it for use with its own applications?
The numbered paragraphs below provide additional background to the numbered questions in the main part of this document.
[1.2] InCommon Credential Providers are strongly encouraged to post on their web site the privacy and information security policies that govern their identity management system. Resource Providers are strongly encouraged to post their policies with respect to use of personally identifying information.
[1.3] Other InCommon Participants may wish to contact this person or office with further questions about the information you have provided or if they wish to establish a more formal relationship with your organization regarding resource sharing.
[2] Many organizations have very informal processes for issuing electronic credentials. For example, one campus does this through their student bookstore. A Resource Provider may be more willing to accept your assertions to the extent that this process can be seen as authoritative.
[2.1] It is important for a Resource Provider to have some idea of the community whose identities you may represent. This is particularly true for assertions such as the eduPerson "Member of Community" or "student," etc. A typical definition might be "Faculty, staff, and active students" but it might also include alumni, prospective students, temporary employees, visiting scholars, etc. In addition, there may be formal or informal mechanisms for making exceptions to this definition, e.g., to accommodate a former student still finishing a thesis or an unpaid volunteer.
This question asks to whom you, as a Credential Provider, will provide electronic credentials. This is typically broadly defined so that the organization can accommodate a wide variety of applications locally. The reason this question is important is to distinguish between the set of people who might have a credential that you issue and the subset of those people who fall within your definition of "Member of Community" for the purpose of InCommon attribute assertions.
[2.2] The assertion of "Member of Community" is often good enough for deciding whether to grant access to basic on-line resources, e.g., library-like materials or web sites. InCommon encourages participants to use this assertion only for "Faculty, Staff, and active Students" but some organizations may have the need to define this differently. InCommon Resource Providers need to know if has been defined differently.
[2.3] For example, if there is a campus recognized office of record that issues such electronic credentials and that office makes use of strong, reliable technology and good database management practices, those factors might indicate highly reliable credentials and hence trustworthy identity assertions.
[2.4] Different technologies carry different inherent risks. For example, a userID and password can be shared or "stolen" rather easily. A PKI credential or SecureID card is much harder to share or steal. For practical reasons, some campuses use one technology for student credentials and another for faculty and staff. In some cases sensitive applications will warrant stronger and/or secondary credentials.
[2.5] Sending passwords in "clear text" is a significant risk and all InCommon Participants are strongly encouraged to eliminate any such practice. Unfortunately this may be difficult, particularly with legacy applications. For example, gaining access to a centralized calendar application via a wireless data connection while you are attending a conference might reveal your password to many others at that conference. If this is also your campus credential password, it could be used by another person to impersonate you to InCommon Participants.
[2.6] "Single sign-on" (SSO) is a method that allows a user to unlock their electronic identity credential once and then use it for access to a variety of resources and applications for some period of time. This avoids people having to remember many different identifiers and passwords or to continually log into and out of systems. However, it also may weaken the link between an electronic identity and the actual person to whom it refers because someone else might be able to use the same computer and assume the former user's identity. If there is no limit on the duration of a SSO session, a Federation Resource Provider may be concerned about the validity of any identity assertions you might make. Therefore it is important to ask about your use of SSO technologies.
[2.7] In some identity management systems, primary identifiers for people might be reused, particularly if they contain common names, e.g., Jim Smith@MYU.edu. This can create ambiguity if a Resource Provider requires this primary identifier to manage access to resources for that person.
[2.8] Security of the database that holds information about a person is at least as critical as the electronic identity credentials that provide the links to records in that database. Appropriate security for the database, as well as management and audit trails of changes made to that database, and management of access to that database information are important.
[2.9] Many organizations will make available to anyone certain, limited "public information." Other information may be given only to internal organization users or applications, or may require permission from the subject under FERPA or HIPAA rules. A Resource Provider may need to know what information you are willing to make available as "public information" and what rules might apply to other information that you might release.
[2.10] In order to help a Resource Provider assess how reliable your identity assertions may be, it is helpful to know how your organization uses those same assertions. The assumption here is that you are or will use the same identity management system for your own applications as you are using for InCommon purposes.
[2.11] Your answer to this question indicates the degree of confidence you have in the accuracy of your identity assertions.
[2.12] Even "public information" may be constrained in how it can be used. For example, creating a marketing email list by "harvesting" email addresses from a campus directory web site may be considered illicit use of that information. Please indicate what restrictions you place on information you make available to others.
[2.13] Please indicate what legal or other external constraints there may be on information you make available to others.
[3.1] Please identify your access management requirements to help other Participants understand and plan for use of your resource(s). You might also or instead provide contact information for an office or person who could answer inquiries.
[3.2] As a Resource Provider, please declare what use(s) you would make of attribute information you receive.
[3.3] Personally identifying information can be a wide variety of things, not merely a name or credit card number. All information other than large group identity, e.g., "member of community," should be protected while resident on your site.
[3.4] Certain functional positions can have extraordinary privileges with respect to information on your systems. What oversight means are in place to ensure incumbents do not misuse such privileges?
[3.5] Occasionally protections break down and information is compromised. Some states have laws requiring notification of affected individuals. What legal and/or institutional policies govern notification of individuals if information you hold is compromised?
[4.1] Most InCommon Participants will use Internet2 Shibboleth technology but this is not required. It may be important for other participants to understand whether you are using other implementations of the technology standards.
[4.2] As a Credential Provider, you may wish to place constraints on the kinds of applications that may make use of your assertions. As a Resource Provider, you make wish to make a statement about how User credentials must be managed. This question is completely open ended and for your use.
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eduPersonAffiliation as defined in the eduPerson schema. It is intended to include faculty, staff, student, and other persons with a basic set of privileges that go with membership in the university community (e.g., library privileges). "Member of Community" could be derived from other values in {{eduPersonAffiliation"} or assigned explicitly as "Member" in the electronic identity database. See http://www.educause.edu/eduperson/[5