PKI, IdM, & Federations

Triumvirate for Securitywith Privacy

David L. Wasley

net@edu 2006

Outline Why PKI Why identity management Why identity federations Why am I saying this?

What’s the problem? We need to manage access to certain

resources for our campus communities within & across organizations

We need to protect privacy We need to do this with sufficient

reliability We need this to scale

Why PKI PKI supports reliable, trustworthy digital

credentials Issued by a trusted authority Difficult to forge Difficult to “share” if on a smart-chip device

Also supports Document security, e.g. encryption Document validation, e.g. digital signatures

Why identity management Appropriate access management can

require different reliable information about individuals

What an organization needs to know about an individual is context specific

A rich set of information is hard to manage while maintaining policy and privacy

Why identity federation

Separates the meaning of a credential from the identity associated with it

Allows authoritative source to assert up-to-date identity information about a user

Streamlines user experience across a wide variety of resources

Can protect privacy by releasing only what information is appropriate & allowed

Triumvirate Credential asserts

binding between physical person and identity information

Identity Management ensures trustworthy information

Identity Federation supports privacy and appropriate access

To Buy or Build PKI Devil is in the details, e.g. -

Do you requiring broad distribution of a Trust Anchor? Do you require flexibility and generality in your PKI?

Minimizing the need for inter-organization PKI trust can affect the build/buy choice PKI “policy” is based on local business rules Federation rules and, where needed, bilateral

agreements define trust for IdP and SP

What’s the real problem We haven’t yet made it usable by the

average person We’ve insisted on a complex trust model Slow adoption discourages vendors

and results in awkward workarounds Some potential uses do not yet have

complete standards

What needs to be done Every computer should be able to read any

smart-chip device (at least of a given type) Standards are needed (these are emerging) Biometric PINs might be nice ...

Every O/S needs crypto API (this is happening) User interfaces need much improvement

and users need better education and training Functions need to be standardized Federation technology needs to be used ...