INCOMMON
FEDERATION: PARTICIPANT
OPERATIONAL PRACTICES
1.1 The InCommon Participant Operational Practices information below is for:
1.2 Identity Management and/or Privacy information
Additional information about the Participant’s identity management practices and/or privacy policy regarding personal information can be found on-line at the following location(s).
The following person or office can answer questions about the Participant’s identity management system or resource access management policy or practice.
2. Identity Provider Information
The most critical responsibility that an IdentityProvider Participant has to the Federation is to provide trustworthy and accurate identity assertions.[1] It is important for a Service Provider to know how your electronic identity credentials are issued and how reliable the information associated with a given credential (or person) is.
Community
The University makes available electronic
identity credentials to all affiliated users who require access to secure and
protected resources. Affiliated users include faculty, staff and students of the University of
Pennsylvania; employees of the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS);
and, sponsored guests who have an official business need for accessing restricted Penn
resources are eligible for a PennKey. A guest can be a visiting faculty or
staff member, temporary workers, participants in University symposia or
conferences. The electronic identity
persists even after the relationship with the University terminates.
2.2
“Member of Community”[2] is an assertion that might be offered to
enable access to resources made available to individuals who participate in the
primary mission of the university or organization. For example, this assertion might apply to
anyone whose affiliation is “current student, faculty, or staff.”
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 Participants?
The
identity management system maintains affiliated members (active faculty, staff and students) of the University community.
Electronic Identity Credentials
In
brief, the administrative process for issuing electronic identity credentials
dictates that the user (a) be approved/sponsored for the designated
affiliation, (b) provide the necessary identity proofing documentation, (c) be
entered into the appropriate system of record/registration authority, (d)
receive a credential set-up code and (e) create the credential online.
The
following systems of record feed the identity management system: Registrar -
Student Records System (SRS) for students); University Human Resources system for
Faculty and Staff; University of Pennsylvania Health Systems (UPHS) HR for UPHS
employees; and, online registration/creation process though authorized
administrators for temporary/guest identities.
2.4 What technologies are used for your electronic identity credentials (e.g., Kerberos, userID/password, PKI, ...) that are 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?
Kerberos
using strong reusable passwords.
University policy prohibits the use of cleartext passwords over the
network.
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 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.
While
a final decision on SSO for federation has not been published, the current SSO
system establishes a 10 hour global session enforced by the authentication
system. Based on the application owner’s
risk assessment, applications can require re-authentication. Users can terminate the global session at any
time. Safe computing resources and policies are available to users using public
access sites. Periodic communications
are distributed describing the benefits and best practices for SSO
environments.
Each user is assigned a unique username
("PennName") and numeric ID ("PennID"), which in most cases
stay with them for life. While the
PennID is immutable, the PennName can change in a limited number of
circumstances which are documented in policy (http://www.net.isc.upenn.edu/policy/approved/20051128-pennnames-duration.html). To accommodate
this possibility, application providers who have registered an interest in a
name are notified if that PennName changes.
Users with a persistent affiliation to the University
are assigned authentication credentials ("PennKey") based on their
PennName. Guest PennKeys accounts are
system generated codes which expire and are not re-used.
Electronic Identity Database
Information
in the electronic identity database is fed from the source systems of records
defined above in section 2.3. Information in the electronic identity
database is not updateable by users online.
Some directory attributes are updatable by users online. There will be a dependency on required data
and sources.
Generally,
the University electronic identity database does not contain public
information. All dissemination of
University stored information is governed by the University Office of Audit, Compliance
and Privacy. Dissemination of attributes
through Shibboleth for internal and federated authentication would be based on
Service Provider requirements and standard available attribute “blocks”. These blocks of data would contain logical
groupings of data for authentication and authorization (e.g. an InCommon block
would contain the standard/required InCommon attribute for federation)
Uses of Your Electronic Identity Credential System
Classes
of applications include, and not limited to, financial, administrative,
research, operational and communication.
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.
2.11 Would you consider your attribute assertions to be reliable enough to:
[X] control access to on-line information databases licensed to your organization?
[X] be used to purchase goods or services for your organization?
[X] enable access to personal information such as student loan status?
Federation Participants must respect the legal and organizational privacy constraints on attribute information provided by other Participants and use it only for its intended purposes.
The expectation is that
attribute information passed to service providers is only used for authentication and
authorization decisions for the user’s access to the protected resources.
The University Office of Audit, Compliance
and Privacy provides oversight and policy guidelines for privacy issues. Attributes
used for internal and Federated authentication would be subject to review based
on current policy.
3. Service Provider Information
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 Identity Providers. 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.
N/A at this time.
No Service Providers are being registered. It is anticipated that only attributes
required for authentication and authorization decisions would required.
3.2 What use do you make of attribute information that you receive in addition to basic access control decisions? For example, do you aggregate session access records or records of specific information accessed based on attribute information, or make attribute information available to partner organizations, etc.?
N/A at this time.
N/A at this time.
N/A at this time.
N/A at this time.
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 2.1
Are there any other considerations or information that you wish to make known to other Federation participants with whom you might interoperate? 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?
[1] A general note regarding attributes and recommendations within the Federation is available here: http://www.incommonfederation.org/attributes.html
[2] "Member" is one possible value for 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/