Documents Contributed by ECAR, Identity Management, and Standards

In the last few years, federated identity management—the agreements, standards, and technologies that make identity and entitlements portable across autonomous domains—has become a topic of significant interest for higher education. This Burton Group research discusses federation standards and products, which are sufficiently mature that early adopters have successfully deployed federated sign-on environments. Standards groups are extending federation protocols into more complex scenarios, such as cross-domain authorization, provisioning, and service delivery. Burton Group (www.burtongroup.com) provides technically in-depth research and advisory services for colleges and universities, government agencies, and commercial enterprises. Burton Group's practical and unbiased research and advice helps technologists make smart IT infrastructure decisions in increasingly complex environments. Burton Group covers directories, identity management, application platforms, architecture, and network and telecom infrastructure topics.

Federated identity management has emerged as a strategic requirement to enterprises. Traditional approaches such as delegated administration or directory synchronization do not support many users and organizations. Current SAML, WS-Security, and Liberty Alliance specifications must generate an interoperable security protocol stack for federated identity management and Web services to succeed. This presentation addresses the need for enterprises to deploy federated identity in a secure, evolutionary manner by integrating it with existing identity and access management architectures.