Summary

The Research Infrastructures (from now on just Infrastructures) that follow the AARC Blueprint Architecture [AARC-BPA] set up their own AAI to grant access to their services. The AAI is typically based on a central IdP-SP proxy that act as a gateway for the Infrastructure services and resources. In order to assign an identity to the users of the research collaboration or the community they serve, Infrastructures rely on external Identity Providers and employ identity linking strategies.

The Infrastructures also define one or more assurance profiles, or a combination of assurance components, tailored to a specific risk assessment [AARC2-JRA1.1A].

In order to assign an assurance profile to a user, the Infrastructure shall evaluate the assurance components of the linked identity, or identities, used to register to the Infrastructure’s AAI or used during authentication at the infrastructure proxy

Guidelines for LoA elevation through account linking in cross-sector AAIs

Summary

In the proposal for AARC2, the evolution of R&E AAIs is closely related to interaction with cross-sector AAIs:

The evolution of the R&E AAIs has to take into account the new environment for eGOV IDs that is being created by the eIDAS Regulation, and the AAIs that are being used in the private sector (both the enterprise and the so-called “social identities”).

In practical terms that means envisioning integration models and investigating interoperability issues.

In this context, Account Linking between R&E existing identities and cross-sector identities is a mean to achieve integration, and it is a fundamental component to make different AAIs interoperable. On the other hand, identities coming from cross-sector AAIs can have a very low Assurance Level (AL), or on the contrary an AL much higher to the one common in the R&E space. In the first case, in order to use low-AL identites in R&E we need techniques and policies to elevate the AL, while in the second one we can combine the higher-AL identities with the R&E ones to achieve a higher AL to be used in sensitive context like life science.

Links

Working docs

Current version (comment only, ask for edit privileges if needed)

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/15gdUGuAMiDVQIC_eEDfA1vy35NKKh47K_Ak5NdBUzcI/edit?usp=sharing

Final PDF

To be published

Discussion

Meetings schedule and Minutes

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