Touchstone MIT Participant Operating Practices

INCOMMON FEDERATION: PARTICIPANT OPERATIONAL PRACTICES

Participation in InCommon Federation ("Federation") enables the participant to use Shibboleth identity attribute _sharing technologies to manage access to on-line resources that can be made available to the InCommon community. One goal of the Federation is to develop, over time, community standards for such cooperating organizations to ensure that shared _attribute assertions are sufficiently robust and trustworthy to manage access to important protected resources. As the community of trust evolves, the Federation expects that participants eventually should be able to trust each other's identity management systems and resource access management systems as they trust their own.

A fundamental expectation of InCommon Participants is that they provide authoritative and accurate attribute assertions to other participants and that participants receiving an attribute assertion protect it and respect privacy constraints placed on it by the Federation or the source of that information. In furtherance of this goal, InCommon requires that each participant make available to other participants certain basic information about any identity management system, including the identity attributes that are supported, or resource access management system that they register for use within the Federation.

Two criteria for trustworthy attribute assertions by Credential Providers are: (1) that the identity management system fall under the purview of the organization's executive or business management, and (2) the system for issuing end-user credentials (e.g. PKI certificates, userids/passwords, Kerberos principals, etc.) specifically have in place appropriate risk management measures (for example authentication and authorization standards, security practices, risk assessment, change management controls, audit trails, etc.).

InCommon expects that Resource Providers, who receive attribute assertions from another organization, respect the other organization's policies, rules and standards regarding the protection and use of that data. Furthermore, such information should be used only for the purposes for which it was provided. InCommon strongly discourages the sharing of that data with third parties, or aggregation of it for marketing purposes without the explicit permission of the identity information provider.

InCommon requires participating organizations to make available to all other InCommon Participants answers to the questions below.  Additional information to help answer each question is available in the next section of this document. There is also a glossary at the end of this document that defines terms shown in italics.

Federation Participant Information

1.1 The InCommon Participant Operational Practices information below is for:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The information below is accurate as of this date October, 2006

1.2 Identity Management and/or Privacy information

Additional information about the Participant's identity management practices and/or privacy policy regarding personal information can be found on-line at the following location(s).
URL(s): none at this time

1.3 Contact information

The following person or office can answer questions about the Participant's identity management system or resource access management policy or practice.
Name: Paul B. Hill
Title or role: Consulting Architect within Information Services and Technology
Email address: touchstone-support at mit.edu
Phone: (617) 253-0124 FAX: (617) 258-8736

Credential Provider Information
The most critical responsibility that a Credential Provider Participant has to the Federation is to provide trustworthy and accurate identity assertions.[3] It is important for a Resource Provider to know how your electronic identity credentials are issued and how reliable the information associated with a given credential (or person) is known.

Community

2.1 If you are a Credential Provider, how do you define the set of people who are eligible to receive an electronic identity? If exceptions to this definition are allowed, who must approve such an exception?
 
MIT faculty, students and staff are entitled to obtain MIT credentials. These are in the form of Kerberos principals, X.509 Certificates, and MIT ID Cards. Additionally a sponsored guest account is available to any voucher or temp employee working for an MIT department. Guests and visitors who are working on Institute projects in a way that requires an MIT electronic identity are also eligible for a sponsored guest account. Finally, former MIT students or staff who are continuing their work with their department for a period of time after their departure can have their account sponsored by their supervisor.
 Accounts can be sponsored by any current member of the MIT faculty or staff. Students are currently not eligible to sponsor guest accounts. An account's sponsor will be the primary contact for problems related to the account and renewal questions.

2.2 "Member of Community"[4] is an assertion that might be offered to enable access to resources made available to individuals who participate in the primary mission of the university or organization. For example, this assertion might apply to anyone whose affiliation is "current student, faculty, or staff."

What subset of persons registered in your identity management system would you identify as a "Member of Community" in Shibboleth identity assertions to other InCommon participants?
 
We view "Member of Community" as a broad category that includes all holders of a valid MIT Kerberos ID or X.509certificate. In addition to faculty, staff, and students, this will include visiting scholars, contractors, and voucher employees. It will not includes people that have an MIT ID number but do not have a valid MIT Kerberos principal or X.509 certificate.
 We are able to provide finer granularity for other negotiated assertions.
 

Electronic Identity Credentials

2.3 Please describe in general terms the administrative process used to establish an electronic identity that results in a record for that person being created in your electronic identity database? Please identify the_ _office(s) of record for this purpose. For example, "Registrar's Office for students; HR for faculty and staff."
 

Students: The office of record is the Registrar's Office.

When a student is accepted, an acceptance package is sent to the student. The acceptance package includes a unique six word pass phrase that the student must use, in addition to their MIT ID number to complete the account registration process. At that time the account will appear as an affiliate. Later in the process, the account will be transitioned from MIT Affiliate to MIT Student. Picture based identity proofing is later performed when the MIT ID Card is issued to the student.
 

Faculty and Staff: The office of record is Human Resources.

It is possible for new hires to obtain MIT computer credentials prior to their date of hire. However the account will be marked as an affiliate until the starting date of record has occurred. At that time the account will transition from MIT Affiliate to MIT Employee. Identity proofing with third party picture IDs is performed when an MIT ID Card is issued.

Affiliates: The office of record is Information Services and Technologies.
 

A sponsored guest account is required for voucher or temp staff, former students or staff who are no longer eligible but need continuing access to their account, as well as visitors who need an MIT electronic identity.
Accounts can be sponsored by any current member of the MIT faculty or staff. Students are currently not eligible to sponsor guest accounts. An account's sponsor will be the primary contact for problems related to the account and renewal questions."
 

Guest accounts are valid for up to two years and are easily renewable with approval of the account's sponsor.

The sponsor is able to provide the information about the guest via an authenticated self service web form. The guest will then be contact via email and given instructions on how to complete the account registration process. Holders of guest accounts are not necessarily issued MIT ID Cards.

2.4 What technologies are used for your electronic identity credentials (e.g. Kerberos, userID/password, PKI, ...) that may be used with InCommon actions? If more than one type of electronic credential is issued, how is it determined who receives which type? If multiple credentials are linked, how is this managed (e.g. anyone with a Kerberos credential also can acquire a PKI credential) and recorded?

Kerberos credentials form the basis of our electronic identity. Anyone with a valid Kerberos name, matching password, and matching MIT ID number may also obtain an X.509 certificate.

2.5 If your electronic identity credentials require the use of a secret password or PIN, and there are circumstances in which that secret would be transmitted across a network without being protected by encryption (i.e. "clear text passwords" are used when accessing campus services), please identify who in your organization can discuss with any other Participant concerns that this might raise for them:

No clear text passwords are required to access any services operated by Information Services and Technology or any mission critical service operated by other business units.
 

It is possible that individual users have established identities on some systems which use the same username and password as the primary Kerberos realm, and that they occasionally send the password in the clear. If and when we become aware of such a situation we educate the user and typically require a password change.

We do have a team that performs some active monitoring for the use of passwords in the clear.

If an InCommon Participant believes that an active attack is originating from MIT then security@mit.edu should be contacted.

2.6 If you support a "single sign-on" (SSO) or similar campus-wide system to allow a single user authentication action to serve multiple applications and you will make use of this to authenticate people for InCommon Resource Providers, please describe the key security aspects of your SSO system including whether session timeouts are enforced by the system, whether user-initiated session termination is supported, and how use with "public access sites" is protected.
 
Our current primary web authentication system uses X.509 certificates. Users are able to obtain their personal X.509 certificates using a web form that uses SSL to protect the communications channel. Users are prompted for their Kerberos name, password, and MIT ID number when attempting to obtain a new X.509 certificate.

Session timeouts are not enforced by the system; however users may choose to create a certificate that has a one day expiration time. User-initiated session termination is not supported, however users are able to delete their X.509 certificates if they so desire.

2.7 Are your primary electronic identifiers for people, such as "net ID," eduPerson EPPN, or eduPersonTargetedID considered to be unique for all time to the individual to whom they are assigned? If not, what is your policy for re-assignment and is there a hiatus between such reuse?

At this time the Kerberos user principal names are not recycled. In the past they were allowed to be recycled, and we may change this policy in the future, any such change would be reflected in this document.

Electronic Identity Database

2.8 How is information in your electronic identity database acquired and updated? Are specific offices designated by your administration to perform this function? Are individuals allowed to update their own information on-line?

Information Services and Technology (IS&T) acts primarily as a consolidator and redistributor of identity data. The MIT ID number creation is centralized in one database and some business units are delegated to create new IDs in the database. IS&T also operates the primary Kerberos realm and the MIT CA. Information about individuals, which affects provisioning and categorization, comes from various data sources including Human Resources, the Registrar, MIT Card Services, and IS&T Accounts.

There are some self service applications which enable individuals to update their own information. Individuals are not empowered to change their username, MIT ID number, name, or MIT affiliation.

2.9 What information in this database is considered "public information" and would be provided to any interested party?

Note users may choose to suppress some of this directory information.
 

• MIT Affiliation [employee | student | affiliate]
• DisplayName
• EPPN
• MIT email address
• Department affiliation
• Job title if an employee

Your Uses of Your Electronic Identity Credential System

2.10 Please identify typical classes of applications^ ^ for which your electronic identity credentials are used within your own organization?

Classes B, C, and D are applicable.
 
Attribute Assertions
 

Attributes are the information data elements in an attribute assertion you might make to another Federation participant concerning the identity of a person in your identity management system.

2.11 Would you consider your attribute assertions to be reliable enough to:

[ X] control access to on-line information databases licensed to your organization?
[ X] be used to purchase goods or services for your organization?
[ X] enable access to personal information such as student loan status?

Note that each of these answers require more context to fully answer. We do have reliable data sources which can be used to generate such assertions, but there needs to be agreement about the exact nature of the assertion and the context in which it will be used in order to be fully confident in the response to the question.

Privacy Policy

Federation participants must respect the legal and organizational privacy constraints on attribute information provided by other participants and use it only for its intended purposes.

2.12 What restrictions do you place on the use of attribute information that you might provide to other Federation participants?

The answer is context dependant and requires out of band negotiation.

2.13 What policies govern the use of attribute information that you might release to other Federation participants? For example, is some information subject to FERPA or HIPAA restrictions?

The answer is context dependant on the specific attribute information and how it will be used. Out of band negotiations will be required.

Resource Provider Information

Resource Providers are trusted to ask for only the information necessary to make an appropriate access control decision, and to not misuse information provided to them by Credential Providers. Resource Providers must describe the basis on which access to resources is managed and their practices with respect to attribute information they receive from other Participants.

3.1 What attribute information about an individual do you require in order to manage access to resources you might make available to other Participants? Describe separately for each resource ProviderID that you have registered.

First, our understanding is that this information must be provided even to join the federation which will certainly precede the registration of a ProviderID hence this question appears to be a bit premature.

Overall the answer to this question will evolve as individual business units create applications for use within the federation. We imagine that some applications will require the eduPerson EPPN or eduPersonTargetedID. Other applications will simply need to know that the user has some affiliation with a participant, still others may need to distinguish the affiliation between student, faculty, staff, and other.

3.2 What use do you make of attribute information that you receive in addition to basic access control decisions? For example, do you aggregate session access records or records of specific information accessed based on attribute information, or make attribute information available to partner organizations, etc.?

We do not envision aggregating session access records or records of specific information accessed based on attribute information at this time. Nor do we envision sharing such information with other organizations at this time.

3.3 What human and technical controls are in place on access to and use of attribute information that might refer to only one specific person, i.e. personally identifiable information? For example, is this information encrypted?

No single blanket statement can be made in response to this question. The answer will vary for each application and line of business that creates an application that can be used by federation participants.

3.4 Describe the human and technical controls that are in place on the management of super-user and other privileged accounts that might have the authority to grant access to personally identifiable information?

No single blanket statement can be made in response to this question. The answer will vary for each application and line of business that creates an application that can be used by federation participants.

3.5 If personally identifiable information is compromised, what actions do you take to notify potentially affected individuals?

No single blanket statement can be made in response to this question. The answer will vary for each application and line of business that creates an application that can be used by federation participants.

As an example, if the information were simply which individuals made changes to a wiki page, or posted to a blog, over time, we would likely make no effort to notify the affected individuals.

However, if we felt that an information disclosure could potentially be used by someone to perform identity theft we would take steps to notify the affected individuals. We would also follow all applicable laws and regulations. _
 

4.0 Other Information

4.1 Technical Standards, Versions and Interoperability
Identify the version of Internet2 Shibboleth code release that you are using or, if not using the standard Shibboleth code, what version(s) of the SAML and SOAP and any other relevant standards you have implemented for this purpose.

Shibboleth 1.3.x. We are planning to move to Shibboleth 2.0 over the next 18 months. The project plans have not yet been published.

4.2 Other Considerations
Are there any other considerations or information that you wish to make known to other Federation participants with whom you might interoperate, e.g., concern about the use of clear text passwords or responsibilities in case of a security breach involving identity information you may have provided?

No.

*Additional Notes and Details on the Operational Practices Questions

As a community of organizations willing to manage access to on-line resources cooperatively, and often without formal contracts in the case of non-commercial resources, it is essential that each participant have a good understanding of the identity and resource management practices implemented by other participants. The purpose of the questions above is to establish a base level of common understanding by making this information available for other participants to evaluate.

In answering these questions, please consider what you would want to know about your own operations if you were another participant deciding what level of trust to place in interactions with your on-line systems. For example:

• What would you need to know about a Credential Provider in order to make an informed decision whether to accept their assertions to manage access to your on-line resources or applications?
• What would you need to know about a Resource Provider in order to feel confident providing it information that it might not otherwise be able to have?
  It also might help to consider how identity management systems within a single institution could be used among its organizations.
• What might your central campus IT organization, as a Resource Provider, ask of a peer campus Credential Provider (e.g. Computer Science Department, central Library, or Medical Center) in order to decide whether to accept its identity assertions for access to resources that the IT organization controls?
• What might a campus department ask about the central campus identity management system if the department wanted to leverage it for use with its own applications?

The numbered paragraphs below provide additional background to the numbered questions in the main part of this document.

[1.2] InCommon Credential Providers are strongly encouraged to post on their web site the privacy and information security policies that govern their identity management system. Resource Providers are strongly encouraged to post their policies with respect to use of personally identifying information.

[1.3] Other InCommon Participants may wish to contact this person or office with further questions about the information you have provided or if they wish to establish a more formal relationship with your organization regarding resource sharing.

[2] Many organizations have very informal processes for issuing electronic credentials. For example, one campus does this through their student bookstore. A Resource Provider may be more willing to accept your assertions to the extent that this process can be seen as authoritative.

[2.1] It is important for a Resource Provider to have some idea of the community whose identities you may represent. This is particularly true for assertions such as the eduPerson "Member of Community" or "student," etc. A typical definition might be "Faculty, staff, and active students" but it might also include alumni, prospective students, temporary employees, visiting scholars, etc. In addition, there may be formal or informal mechanisms for making exceptions to this definition, e.g. to accommodate a former student still finishing a thesis or an unpaid volunteer.

This question asks to whom you, as a Credential Provider, will provide electronic credentials. This is typically broadly defined so that the organization can accommodate a wide variety of applications locally. The reason this question is important is to distinguish between the set of people who might have a credential that you issue and the subset of those people who fall within your definition of "Member of Community" for the purpose of InCommon attribute assertions.

[2.2] The assertion of "Member of Community" is often good enough for deciding whether to grant access to basic on-line resources, e.g. library-like materials or web sites. InCommon encourages participants to use this assertion only for "Faculty, Staff, and active Students" but some organizations may have the need to define this differently. InCommon Resource Providers need to know if has been defined differently.

[2.3] For example, if there is a campus recognized office of record that issues such electronic credentials and that office makes use of strong, reliable technology and good database management practices, those factors might indicate highly reliable credentials and hence trustworthy identity assertions.

[2.4] Different technologies carry different inherent risks. For example, a userID and password can be shared or "stolen" rather easily. A PKI credential or SecureID card is much harder to share or steal. For practical reasons, some campuses use one technology for student credentials and another for faculty and staff. In some cases sensitive applications will warrant stronger and/or secondary credentials.

[2.5] Sending passwords in "clear text" is a significant risk and all InCommon Participants are strongly encouraged to eliminate any such practice. Unfortunately this may be difficult, particularly with legacy applications. For example, gaining access to a centralized calendar application via a wireless data connection while you are attending a conference might reveal your password to many others at that conference. If this is also your campus credential password, it could be used by another person to impersonate you to InCommon Participants.

[2.6] "Single sign-on" (SSO) is a method that allows a user to unlock their electronic identity credential once and then use it for access to a variety of resources and applications for some period of time. This avoids people having to remember many different identifiers and passwords or to continually log into and out of systems. However, it also may weaken the link between an electronic identity and the actual person to whom it refers because someone else might be able to use the same computer and assume the former user's identity. If there is no limit on the duration of a SSO session, a Federation Resource Provider may be concerned about the validity of any identity assertions you might make. Therefore it is important to ask about your use of SSO technologies.

[2.7] In some identity management systems, primary identifiers for people might be reused, particularly if they contain common names, e.g. Jim Smith@MYU.edu. This can create ambiguity if a Resource Provider requires this primary identifier to manage access to resources for that person.

[2.8] Security of the database that holds information about a person is at least as critical as the electronic identity credentials that provide the links to records in that database. Appropriate security for the database, as well as management and audit trails of changes made to that database, and management of access to that database information are important.

[2.9] Many organizations will make available to anyone certain, limited "public information." Other information may be given only to internal organization users or applications, or may require permission from the subject under FERPA or HIPAA rules. A Resource Provider may need to know what information you are willing to make available as "public information" and what rules might apply to other information that you might release.

[2.10] In order to help a Resource Provider assess how reliable your identity assertions may be, it is helpful to know how your organization uses those same assertions. The assumption here is that you are or will use the same identity management system for your own applications as you are using for InCommon purposes.

[2.11] Your answer to this question indicates the degree of confidence you have in the accuracy of your identity assertions.

[2.12] Even "public information" may be constrained in how it can be used. For example, creating a marketing email list by "harvesting" email addresses from a campus directory web site may be considered illicit use of that information. Please indicate what restrictions you place on information you make available to others.

[2.13] Please indicate what legal or other external constraints there may be on information you make available to others.

[3.1] Please identify your access management requirements to help other Participants understand and plan for use of your resource(s). You might also or instead provide contact information for an office or person who could answer inquiries.

[3.2] As a Resource Provider, please declare what use(s) you would make of attribute information you receive.

[3.3] Personally identifying information can be a wide variety of things, not merely a name or credit card number. All information other than large group identity, e.g. "member of community," should be protected while resident on your site.

[3.4] Certain functional positions can have extraordinary privileges with respect to information on your systems. What oversight means are in place to ensure incumbents do not misuse such privileges?

[3.5] Occasionally protections break down and information is compromised. Some states have laws requiring notification of affected individuals. What legal and/or institutional policies govern notification of individuals if information you hold is compromised?

[4.1] Most InCommon Participants will use Internet2 Shibboleth technology but this is not required. It may be important for other participants to understand whether you are using other implementations of the technology standards.

[4.2] As a Credential Provider, you may wish to place constraints on the kinds of applications that may make use of your assertions. _As a _Resource Provider, you make wish to make a statement about how User credentials must be managed. This question is completely open ended and for your use.

• *Glossary