A Roadmap for Using NSF Cyberinfrastructure with InCommon

This document provides a Roadmap for using the InCommon identity federation to enable researchers to access NSF cyberinfrastructure (CI) via their campus authentication service. It presents benefits and challenges of using InCommon for NSF cyberinfrastructure, and guidance in overcoming the challenges.NSF OCI-1040777, IU Pervasive Technology Institut

Integrating security solutions to support nanoCMOS electronics research

The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded Meeting the Design Challenges of nanoCMOS Electronics (nanoCMOS) is developing a research infrastructure for collaborative electronics research across multiple institutions in the UK with especially strong industrial and commercial involvement. Unlike other domains, the electronics industry is driven by the necessity of protecting the intellectual property of the data, designs and software associated with next generation electronics devices and therefore requires fine-grained security. Similarly, the project also demands seamless access to large scale high performance compute resources for atomic scale device simulations and the capability to manage the hundreds of thousands of files and the metadata associated with these simulations. Within this context, the project has explored a wide range of authentication and authorization infrastructures facilitating compute resource access and providing fine-grained security over numerous distributed file stores and files. We conclude that no single security solution meets the needs of the project. This paper describes the experiences of applying X.509-based certificates and public key infrastructures, VOMS, PERMIS, Kerberos and the Internet2 Shibboleth technologies for nanoCMOS security. We outline how we are integrating these solutions to provide a complete end-end security framework meeting the demands of the nanoCMOS electronics domain

Federated identity architecture of the european eID system

Federated identity management is a method that facilitates management of identity processes and policies among the collaborating entities without a centralized control. Nowadays, there are many federated identity solutions, however, most of them covers different aspects of the identification problem, solving in some cases specific problems. Thus, none of these initiatives has consolidated as a unique solution and surely it will remain like that in a near future. To assist users choosing a possible solution, we analyze different federated identify approaches, showing main features, and making a comparative study among them. The former problem is even worst when multiple organizations or countries already have legacy eID systems, as it is the case of Europe. In this paper, we also present the European eID solution, a purely federated identity system that aims to serve almost 500 million people and that could be extended in midterm also to eID companies. The system is now being deployed at the EU level and we present the basic architecture and evaluate its performance and scalability, showing that the solution is feasible from the point of view of performance while keeping security constrains in mind. The results show a good performance of the solution in local, organizational, and remote environments

Security and privacy requirements for a multi-institutional cancer research data grid: an interview-based study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Data protection is important for all information systems that deal with human-subjects data. Grid-based systems – such as the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) – seek to develop new mechanisms to facilitate real-time federation of cancer-relevant data sources, including sources protected under a variety of regulatory laws, such as HIPAA and 21CFR11. These systems embody new models for data sharing, and hence pose new challenges to the regulatory community, and to those who would develop or adopt them. These challenges must be understood by both systems developers and system adopters. In this paper, we describe our work collecting policy statements, expectations, and requirements from regulatory decision makers at academic cancer centers in the United States. We use these statements to examine fundamental assumptions regarding data sharing using data federations and grid computing.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>An interview-based study of key stakeholders from a sample of US cancer centers. Interviews were structured, and used an instrument that was developed for the purpose of this study. The instrument included a set of problem scenarios – difficult policy situations that were derived during a full-day discussion of potentially problematic issues by a set of project participants with diverse expertise. Each problem scenario included a set of open-ended questions that were designed to elucidate stakeholder opinions and concerns. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and used for both qualitative and quantitative analysis. For quantitative analysis, data was aggregated at the individual or institutional unit of analysis, depending on the specific interview question.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Thirty-one (31) individuals at six cancer centers were contacted to participate. Twenty-four out of thirty-one (24/31) individuals responded to our request- yielding a total response rate of 77%. Respondents included IRB directors and policy-makers, privacy and security officers, directors of offices of research, information security officers and university legal counsel. Nineteen total interviews were conducted over a period of 16 weeks. Respondents provided answers for all four scenarios (a total of 87 questions). Results were grouped by broad themes, including among others: governance, legal and financial issues, partnership agreements, de-identification, institutional technical infrastructure for security and privacy protection, training, risk management, auditing, IRB issues, and patient/subject consent.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The findings suggest that with additional work, large scale federated sharing of data within a regulated environment is possible. A key challenge is developing suitable models for authentication and authorization practices within a federated environment. Authentication – the recognition and validation of a person's identity – is in fact a global property of such systems, while authorization – the permission to access data or resources – mimics data sharing agreements in being best served at a local level. Nine specific recommendations result from the work and are discussed in detail. These include: (1) the necessity to construct separate legal or corporate entities for governance of federated sharing initiatives on this scale; (2) consensus on the treatment of foreign and commercial partnerships; (3) the development of risk models and risk management processes; (4) development of technical infrastructure to support the credentialing process associated with research including human subjects; (5) exploring the feasibility of developing large-scale, federated honest broker approaches; (6) the development of suitable, federated identity provisioning processes to support federated authentication and authorization; (7) community development of requisite HIPAA and research ethics training modules by federation members; (8) the recognition of the need for central auditing requirements and authority, and; (9) use of two-protocol data exchange models where possible in the federation.</p

Contributions to the privacy provisioning for federated identity management platforms

Identity information, personal data and user’s profiles are key assets for organizations and companies by becoming the use of identity management (IdM) infrastructures a prerequisite for most companies, since IdM systems allow them to perform their business transactions by sharing information and customizing services for several purposes in more efficient and effective ways. Due to the importance of the identity management paradigm, a lot of work has been done so far resulting in a set of standards and specifications. According to them, under the umbrella of the IdM paradigm a person’s digital identity can be shared, linked and reused across different domains by allowing users simple session management, etc. In this way, users’ information is widely collected and distributed to offer new added value services and to enhance availability. Whereas these new services have a positive impact on users’ life, they also bring privacy problems. To manage users’ personal data, while protecting their privacy, IdM systems are the ideal target where to deploy privacy solutions, since they handle users’ attribute exchange. Nevertheless, current IdM models and specifications do not sufficiently address comprehensive privacy mechanisms or guidelines, which enable users to better control over the use, divulging and revocation of their online identities. These are essential aspects, specially in sensitive environments where incorrect and unsecured management of user’s data may lead to attacks, privacy breaches, identity misuse or frauds. Nowadays there are several approaches to IdM that have benefits and shortcomings, from the privacy perspective. In this thesis, the main goal is contributing to the privacy provisioning for federated identity management platforms. And for this purpose, we propose a generic architecture that extends current federation IdM systems. We have mainly focused our contributions on health care environments, given their particularly sensitive nature. The two main pillars of the proposed architecture, are the introduction of a selective privacy-enhanced user profile management model and flexibility in revocation consent by incorporating an event-based hybrid IdM approach, which enables to replace time constraints and explicit revocation by activating and deactivating authorization rights according to events. The combination of both models enables to deal with both online and offline scenarios, as well as to empower the user role, by letting her to bring together identity information from different sources. Regarding user’s consent revocation, we propose an implicit revocation consent mechanism based on events, that empowers a new concept, the sleepyhead credentials, which is issued only once and would be used any time. Moreover, we integrate this concept in IdM systems supporting a delegation protocol and we contribute with the definition of mathematical model to determine event arrivals to the IdM system and how they are managed to the corresponding entities, as well as its integration with the most widely deployed specification, i.e., Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). In regard to user profile management, we define a privacy-awareness user profile management model to provide efficient selective information disclosure. With this contribution a service provider would be able to accesses the specific personal information without being able to inspect any other details and keeping user control of her data by controlling who can access. The structure that we consider for the user profile storage is based on extensions of Merkle trees allowing for hash combining that would minimize the need of individual verification of elements along a path. An algorithm for sorting the tree as we envision frequently accessed attributes to be closer to the root (minimizing the access’ time) is also provided. Formal validation of the above mentioned ideas has been carried out through simulations and the development of prototypes. Besides, dissemination activities were performed in projects, journals and conferences.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ingeniería TelemáticaPresidente: María Celeste Campo Vázquez.- Secretario: María Francisca Hinarejos Campos.- Vocal: Óscar Esparza Martí

Governance, membership, and community : developing a regional consumer co-operative in Saskatchewan

Retailers in rural Saskatchewan are having to contend with two predominant trends—rural and retail restructuring. Decreasing rural populations, increased consumer mobility, and the chronic instability of primary industries such as agriculture and forestry continue to impact rural communities in the province. The growing presence of multinational corporations, the drive for economies of scale, and the centralization of services into larger urban centers are all influencing the retail sector, particularly in rural areas. In response to these trends, retail co-operatives operating in Northern and Central Saskatchewan have joined a larger urban-based co-op in Prince Albert to form a regional co-operative. Co-operative theory suggests this regional structure may create internal obstacles for co-ops that differ from those of private firms, as co-operatives must consider the implications of reorganization on membership structures and member relations. While most of the empirical investigation has focused on large agricultural co-operatives, less attention has been afforded to consumer co-operatives.Through interviews with the delegates and managers of the Prince Albert Co-operative Association (PACA), this study examines how a multi-branch consumer co-operative has adapted to the present rural and retail milieu. It investigates the new relationships that have emerged among the key stakeholders including members, delegates, and managers as well as the new relations between the major structures, namely the branches and the central body. The research is a starting point for understanding how member and enterprise interests are mediated, communicated, and coordinated within a regional co-operative. Delegates are the focal point of the study as they play an integral role in all of these relations. The findings of the study suggest that while new relationships do form within a multi-branch system, the primary relationship between members and their local co-op branch remains relatively unaffected. Further, the study on the PACA adds to Fairtlough’s (2005) work on business structural forms called triarchies. It is argued that the integration of hierarchies, heterachies and responsible autonomy in the form of a federated network reinforces the staying power of the co-op in smaller communities