A paper to make sense of federation protocols

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: DAVE KEARNS ON IDENTITY MANAGEMENT
09/14/05
Today's focus: A paper to make sense of federation protocols

Dear security.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* An identity federation primer
* Links related to Identity Management
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus: A paper to make sense of federation protocols

By Dave Kearns

SAML, ID-FF, ID-WSF, WS-Fed - if these abbreviations, acronyms
and the general alphabet soup surrounding identity federation
leaves you begging for a primer, your prayer has been answered.
HP's Jason Rouault has written a paper, "Making sense of the
federation protocol landscape" which is available in HTML
<http://devresource.hp.com/drc/resources/fed_land/> and PDF
<http://www.networkworld.com/nldsv6756> formats.

Rouault certainly knows what he's talking about. Described by HP
as a "distinguished technologist," Rouault leads the Office of
Technology for the Identity and Security Management business of
HP OpenView. He's responsible for the security strategy,
architecture, and planning of OpenView and its identity
management services (all ID products at HP are under the
OpenView aegis).

In addition, Rouault represents HP in the Liberty Alliance
Project. Within the Liberty Alliance, Rouault has served as
chair of the Technology Expert Group and as editor of its
specifications. Like I said, he knows whereof he speaks.

While the paper does contain HP marketing material (the last 4
pages) the rest is relatively unbiased. Either stop reading
after 10 pages, or consider the HP information as the
"advertising" which is paying for the content. And it is good
content.

He opens with a very good definition of federation: "Federation
is the combination of business and technology practices to
enable identities to span systems, networks, and domains in a
secure and trustworthy fashion. This is analogous to how
passports are used to assert our identity as we travel between
countries. An important thing to note is that these domains may
exist both within and between enterprises. The main purpose of
federation is to share identity information across heterogeneous
systems and identity platforms."

Rouault then goes on to give concrete and illustrated examples
followed by a closer look at some of the protocols and
conventions used in federation: Security Assertion Markup
Language (SAML), Liberty ID-FF, Shibboleth, WS-Federation and
Liberty ID-WSF. He concludes with a note on convergence of the
standards and a look at where they are headed, a "future view"
of protocols in general and a deployment timeline that could be
useful as you begin to look at long-term federation projects.

There's little doubt that federation is the wave of the future.
True, we've been saying that for a number of years, but I do
think we can now see that future. If you're unsure about any
parts of it, this paper should help.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

1. McAfee, Omniquad top anti-spyware test
<http://www.networkworld.com/nldsv6901>

2. Google hacking <http://www.networkworld.com/nldsv6753>

3. Supermarket chain freezes Internet access
<http://www.networkworld.com/nldsv6528>

4. The rise of the IT architect
<http://www.networkworld.com/nldsv7010>

5. What's the best way to protect against spyware?
<http://www.networkworld.com/nldsv6902>

_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Dave Kearns

Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's
written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print
"Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be
found at Virtual Quill <http://www.vquill.com/>.

Kearns is the author of three Network World Newsletters: Windows
Networking Tips, Novell NetWare Tips, and Identity Management.
Comments about these newsletters should be sent to him at these

respective addresses: <mailto:windows@vquill.com>,
<mailto:netware@vquill.com>, <mailto:identity@vquill.com>.

Kearns provides content services to network vendors: books,
manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing,
technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill
provides "words to sell by..." Find out more by e-mail at
<mailto:info@vquill.com>
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Ciena
Network World Executive Guide: Compliance can be an opportunity
for Network Improvements

Federal regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are driving
increased corporate spending on key IT areas such as security,
authentication, access control and document management. Get
advice from experts. Read about real-world tactics. Learn about
the dark side of compliance: what happens when thing wrong. And,
how mandates are affecting IT budgets.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=114095
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ARCHIVE LINKS

Archive of the Identity Management newsletter:
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/dir/index.html
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FEATURED READER RESOURCE

IS IT THE NETWORK OR THE STORAGE THAT'S THE PROBLEM?

Midsize and larger businesses often find their IT topology has
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Many of these companies also route long-haul traffic over
fiber-based networks - metropolitan-area networks, WANs and
private optical networks. Who's responsible when a
storage-related problem occurs on a fiber network? For more,
click here:

<http://www.networkworld.com/nldsv7011>
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