Federations Penn State Case Study Renée Shuey Senior Systems Engineer ITS – Emerging Technologies October 13, 2003
Making a Business Case for Federations WebAssign LionShare (Federated P2P) Instant Messaging Office of Student AID/AES/PHEAA
WebAssign What is WebAssign? –A web resource utilized by physics departments for tests, quizzes, and real time answers –Developed/Housed at NCSU –Provides services to 375 institutions ~90% HE 10% K-12 –Business Contracts vary among institutions
WebAssign Federation or Authorization? –What is the protected resource? –Would others benefit from a WebAssign federation? –Unique requirements? Contractual Marketing Attributes needed to make authorization decision
WebAssign InCommon Solution –Providing resource of interest to larger community without expense of security risk managing external resources –Leverage the scale of a shared trust fabric reducing the number of 1 to 1 relying party agreements
Instant Messaging/LionShare Assumption: A botanist at Penn State has more in common with a botanist at the University of Michigan than a nuclear physicist at Penn State Responsible file sharing among peers at different institutions
Instant Messaging/LionShare What is the scope? Benefit others? AuthN/AuthZ requirements? What is the resource I am protecting? –Intellectual property (university/professor)
Student Aid/AES/PHEAA Currently authenticating via 3 systems –University (userid/password) –PHEAA account (userid/password) –Federal (pin) Confusing….at best! Hand off to PHEAA for an example of a state wide higher ed federation…exciting stuff