AARC and CTSC Collaborate on Interfederation

CTSC is starting a collaboration with the European Authentication and Authorisation for Research and Collaboration (AARC) project on use of federated identities for international science. AARC is a two year project that started May 2015. Jim Basney from CTSC joined the June 3-4 AARC kick-off meeting to begin the collaboration.

As the infrastructures for international scientific collaborations migrate from X.509 to SAML for identity management, there is a strong need for interoperability across national SAML federation boundaries. In 2014, the US InCommon federation joined eduGAIN, which connects SAML federations around the world, and now InCommon is engaging with science projects on international interfederation pilots. At the same time, the AARC project in Europe is addressing international adoption of SAML federations by research projects. This represents an opportunity to achieve critical mass around EU-US interfederation activities for science, with CTSC providing needed coordination on the US side.

Specific goals for the CTSC-AARC collaboration include:

1. Training: Develop and disseminate training materials to enable science projects to implement federated access.
2. Pilots: Facilitate US participation in interfederation pilot projects.
3. Incident Response: Establish an operational framework for security and incident response in R&E federations via the SIRTFI working group.
4. Levels of Assurance: Map requirements of cyberinfrastructure providers to an assurance framework that can be implemented in a cost-effective manner by identity federations. 

CTSC will gather input from US cyberinfrastructure (CI) projects for AARC activities, disseminate training and other AARC project outputs to US CI projects, and facilitate EU-US pilot projects.

To participate in the discussion, please join the CTSC Federated Identity Discussion List.