Growth

Interfederation PKI is globally scalable Unfortunately, its not locally deployable… Federation is locally deployable Can it scale globally? Inter-federation Like BGP, only 1000 times harder

Interfederation Connecting autonomous identity federations Critical for global scaling, accommodating local federations, integration across vertical sectors Has technical, financial and policy dimensions Several operational instances – Kalmar2 Union, eduGAIN, ad hocs (UC Trust, Texas) Use cases now numerous, across sectors, within sectors Short-term and long-term approaches If its called the Internet, shouldn’t we start talking about Interfederated identity

Interfederation: Short-term/long-term Long-term is starting to be worked, mostly technically, some ad hoc policy Short-term has happened and should continue, but be informed/inform by long-term Both short-term and long-term need to address same buckets of issues Long-term has potentially disruptive service models

Buckets of interfed issues Both short-term and long-term approaches must address: Exchange, and massage, of metadata Policy alignment Alignment of payloads (attributes) Operational issues – error handling, incident handling, legal and contractual, etc

UK Access Federation Metadata processing

Future metadata flows in Interfederation Org Registrar Aggregator Local trust oracle

Multiple trust contexts in interfederation Org Registrar Aggregator Application auditor Local trust oracle

Trust and Metadata Trusting that the metadata was provided by an authorized entity Secure deposit Trusting that the “organizationally vetted” metadata is correct Self-certified Trusting that the “externally vetted” metadata is true Certified apps E.g. an app listed as R&S is in fact right

Emerging key software and protocols MDA – metadata aggregator PEER – metadata registry management software There may be multiple PEER services instances MDX – the query protocol(s) to request metadata; return via normal publishing protocols Improved discovery services – accountchooser, discojuice, embedded discovery services End-entity categories – an important new type of metadata, allowing for certified apps and IdP’s.

Meta-meta-data Metadata has its own metadata – e.g. who supplied it, when, terms of use, etc. Meta-meta-data may be contained in metadata stream, peeled off to help processing the other metadata, then reinserted as regular metadata into products No real discussions yet on normalizing meta-meta-data Likely little or no need for meta-meta-meta-data, thankfully…

Policy Points in Interfederation How the federation manages verification of both the organizations and their (perhaps delegated) authorized submitters (the FOP) How does the federation manage verification of other richer end-entity attributes it asserts, such as classification of applications (e.g. R&S), recommended attribute release policies, etc. How the federation operates, in terms of signing metadata approaches, legal status, etc. Aligning the LOA at basic and higher levels for authentication Aligning the relationships between IdP and SP when they are not in the same federation Direct contracts should govern where applicable If the contractual flow is member to fed, and then across interfed to an SP in another…

Interfed policy areas Federation operations Legal status and bone fides Operational issues – signing key and metadata protection, incident handling, etc Federation to member relationships Contractual Vetting of members and delegation of metadata Community standards LOA End-entities and vetting values Attribute bundles IdP-SP direct relationships What issues do they work directly? If they have a contract? If they don’t

Interfed policy areas – status/need Federation operations Legal status and bone fides – normative format Operational issues – REFEDS Ops or ? Federation to member relationships Contractual – normative format+normalization Vetting of members and delegation of metadata - normalization Community standards LOA – basic ok. Silver and Bronze need normalization End-entities and vetting values – good informal start; registry and best practices Attribute bundles - good informal start; registry and best practices IdP-SP direct relationships - ???? Privacy, consent, etc handled somewhat by above

Is there a financial dimension to interfed Potential for some federations who charge will lose certain SP’s Seems like a small subset might, but modest financial impacts Charging for registration? For publication of metadata? For use of metadata? Costs of operating the interfed coordination infrastructure – schema, registries, etc. We shall see, sigh…

Is interfederation getting harder? Or, as Ian says, do we just understand the problem better? In the old days, just exchange signing keys Now, do you understand my metadata? My attribute bundles? My application categories and how I assess apps? My policies And do I understand yours? And with more use cases every day…