FederationsPenn State Case Study

Renée Shuey

Senior Systems Engineer

ITS – Emerging Technologies

October 13, 2003

Making a Business Case for Federations

• WebAssign

• LionShare (Federated P2P)

• Instant Messaging

• Office of Student AID/AES/PHEAA

WebAssign

• What is WebAssign?– A web resource utilized by physics departments

for tests, quizzes, and real time answers– Developed/Housed at NCSU– Provides services to 375 institutions

• ~90% HE 10% K-12

– Business• Contracts vary among institutions

WebAssign

• Federation or Authorization?– What is the protected resource?– Would others benefit from a WebAssign

federation?– Unique requirements?

• Contractual

• Marketing

• Attributes needed to make authorization decision

WebAssign

• InCommon Solution– Providing resource of interest to larger

community without expense of security risk managing external resources

– Leverage the scale of a shared trust fabric reducing the number of 1 to 1 relying party agreements

Instant Messaging/LionShare

• Assumption: A botanist at Penn State has more in common with a botanist at the University of Michigan than a nuclear physicist at Penn State

• Responsible file sharing among peers at different institutions

Instant Messaging/LionShare

• What is the scope?

• Benefit others?

• AuthN/AuthZ requirements?

• What is the resource I am protecting?– Intellectual property (university/professor)

Student Aid/AES/PHEAA

• Currently authenticating via 3 systems– University (userid/password)– PHEAA account (userid/password)– Federal (pin)

• Confusing….at best!• Hand off to PHEAA for an example of a

state wide higher ed federation…exciting stuff