Federated Authorization and Relationship

The post from James McGovern[duckdown.blogspot.com] on federated authorization resulted in response from Pat Patterson[blogs.sun.com] and Paul Madsen[connectid.blogspot.com]. First of all I would like to really thank Paul for providing the link to one of the best docs on entitlements that is out there i.e. Conceptual Grid Authorization Framework and Classification[gridforum.org]. It should be a required reading for all the people who enter in to this domain.

But at the same time, I am disappointed that Paul missed another approach mentioned in the document ( or may be I am missing something). Pat rightly identified the 2 typical models that can be implemented and Paul extended it by coming up with all the permutation and combinations using various components. But all the model discussed look to be various permutation of just one model i.e. Authorization Pull Model where the resource is resposible to connect to the Decision Point to get the result. I think a hybrid of the "Authorization Push Model" and Local policy evaluation is more appropriate for the federation model where along with the identity the authorization of subject itself will flow to the other domain. This is approach is defined by SecPAL[research.microsoft.com] (I hope this will become more mainstream and discussed in near future). In addition to that I would like to see more discussion on other policy languages beside XACML including Cassandra and SecPAL.

Another good point raised by James is the concept of relationship and how that should be part of the identity domain. With the rise of social networking this is a good usecase for the internet identity solutions like openID to solve. I do not think that this is a tough problem and I think that it can be solved by mapping it to an attribute or contextual role problem (similar to who has approver role in the context of given user which everybody is trying to solve in provisioning). But it is important to bring in a standard process for trust establishment and standardize the way in which the relationship are shared between various platforms.

My thoughts on the integration scenarios in next few days.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vendor List

Updated: November 12 2006 I am trying to come up with the list of vendors and associated products in the Identity and Access Management arena. Please note that this list is based on marketing/public information and my understanding of the terms which may not comply with any specific groups' definitions and/or requirements. This is by no means a complete list and will keep growing as I get more time to add them and find more companies (any help on that front will be really appreciated). Before we go further along, lets try to define what each of these product typically do so that my mode of classification may make sense or any flaw in my classfication will become apparant. Identity Management/User Provisioning These products typically provide the facility of Workflow-based Identity provisioning, password reset, identity reconciliation/discovery, delegated identity administration and self-service features on wide variety of identity platforms (like LDAP, Unix, Windows, Mainfra...
Read more

Understanding IAM Technology: Web Single Sign On (Web SSO) Part I - Introduction and Use Case Definition

Image
Update September 6, 2015: Part II in the series is now available . Update August 19,2006: I am rewriting this entry based on the methodology I am using for some of other domains. Hopefully, the new methodology would make it more useful to some of you. I talk to a lot of people from developer background who still do not have a good background in the IAM technology. Eventhough there is a lot of information on the web, I have felt a lack of good technological discussion on the various component that  actually form the IAM domain. Some of the good sources for the information on IAM are Microsoft Identity and Access Management Series Archie Reed Oracle Federated Identity Buyers guide Oracle Identity Management Buyer's Guide Identity Management Dissected Most of these document discuss the basic concepts but do not extend it to existing technologies and how it applies to them. This series is an attempt to look at the technology behind the Identity and access m...
Read more

2006 Prediction - Recap

Seems like the 2006 Prediction season is over and so I thought that I will try to capture the various predictions in Identity Management space that I came across. ( Nick at WickID ) Host/Mutual authentication will be critical. There will be an attack against banks using non-cryptographic based host authentication (ie, pictures, cookies). - I am assuming that means machine authentication besides user authentication something similar to that from Passmark and Trusted Network Technology . This makes sense and will really be looking forward to various non-intrusive and intrusive technology in this space. Transaction authentication will become a hot topic later in the year due to session hijacking trojans. - I think people like Bruce Schneier have already been talking about this. An important aspect of transaction authentication is that it needs to be pervasive instead of just being limited to online experience. Besides that the technology that would actually help achieve this should be va...
Read more