Overview and High-Level Design

This document provides a high-level description of an infrastructure to support user provisioning for inter-campus applications within the University of California. Other documents will provide greater detail about components of this infrastructure, within the context of this overview.

For the purposes of this document, user provisioning is defined to be the processes, both human and automated, that authorize (and de-authorize) people to use application systems, when those application systems require information about their users at times other than when those users are currently using the system.  This is distinguished from application systems that use a "pure" single sign-on infrastructure (e.g., the current UCTrust), authorizing anyone with a defined set of attributes that are provided at the start of a session.

The infrastructure described in this document will support the exchange of identity information from campus Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems to application systems, not the entire set of provisioning processes.  The Roles and Responsibilities section below will identify those other provisioning processes.

Note also that this infrastructure is specific to the exchange of identity information for user provisioning. It does, however, embody many aspects of a more general-purpose infrastructure for data interchange among arbitrary systems.

Principles and Assumptions

• Campus identity and access management systems are authoritative for information about the members of their respective communities.  (Note that much of the IAM's information will likely be aggregated from other systems of record on the campus.  Nevertheless, UCTrust designates the IAM as the authoritative contact for its campus.)
• The existing UCTrust agreements, policies, processes, and technology should be leveraged as much as possible.
• The design and implementation must make effective use of University resources.  Where possible implementations should be shared and/or reused.

High-Level Design

The following diagram illustrates the high-level design of this infrastructure.

Just as with Shibboleth in UCTrust:

• Inter-campus applications obtain identity information about their users from IAMs through the use of standard network protocols and formats.
• IAMs control the release of information to service providers through the use of Attribute Release Policies.
• Software will be provided, written in Java, for integration into each campus IAM to implement the standard protocols and formats.
• All IAMs and inter-campus applications have unique names that are assigned to be the same as Shibboleth's names for IdPs and SPs, respectively.

Three types of access will be supported by the Common Interface:

• Snapshot. All identity information allowed by the attribute release policy will be transmitted to the application.
• Subscription. Identity information will be transmitted to the application as add, delete, and update transactions on an event-driven basis.
• PointInTime. All add, delete, and update transactions that have been generated since a specific point in time will be transmitted.

Roles and Responsibilities

• IAM Responsibilities
  • Accuracy and currency of identity information
  • Interfacing and operation of the Common Interface
  • The process for approving attribute release policies
• Application Administrator Responsibilities
  • Implementation of provisioning interfaces for the application
  • Implementation of appropriate protections for the identity information received
• UCTrust Responsibilities
  • Unique naming of all IdPs (IAMs) and SPs (inter-campus applications), as is already done for Shibboleth
  • Other UCTrust operational responsibilities, such as identification of support contacts, maintenance of logs, etc. These are described in UCTrust University of California Identity Management Federation Service Description and Policies.