Federation Participant Information
This information is related to UGA’s participation with InCommon for federated identity services. The following information is required for InCommon participants to make available
to the public.
The InCommon Participant Operational Practices Information:
InCommon Participant organization name: University of Georgia
The information below is accurate as of: April 10th, 2015
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).
http://eits.uga.edu/access_and_security/infosec/pols_regs/policies/
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: Keith Martin
Title or role: IT Manager, Identity Management and Email
Email address: keith.martin@uga.edu
Phone: 706-542-1819
Identity Provider Information
The most critical responsibility that an Identity Provider Participant has to the
Federation is to provide trustworthy and accurate identity assertions. It is important
for a Service Provider to know how your electronic identity credentials are issued
and how reliable the information associated with a given credential (or person) is.
Community
- If you are an Identity 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?
Active University of Georgia Faculty, Staff and Students are automatically eligible
for an electronic identity. Retirees and alumni may retain their electronic identity
following separation or graduation. Contractors, vendors and specific campus visitors
may be eligible for an electronic identity on a case by case basis, and only for the
duration of their specific need. Such exceptions must be sponsored by a faculty or
staff member and are subject to approval of the Office of the Vice President for Technology.
- “Member of Community” 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?
Members of the Community are defined as: Active employees, currently enrolled students
and student eligible to enroll. All others are defined as ‘affiliates’ and identified
as such in eduPersonAffiliation.
Electronic Identity Credentials
- 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.”
The Office of the Registrar is the authority for student data; the payroll system
is the authority for faculty and staff data. Electronic identities are automatically
assigned to students at the time of application and enabled when the student commits
to the University of Georgia. They are generated programmatically, immutable and non-reassigned.
Faculty and staff identities are assigned on request of the hiring manager or employee,
are active on the first day of employment, are disabled no more than five days following
separation of employment, and are immutable and non-reassigned.
- What technologies are used for your electronic identity credentials (e.g., Kerberos,
userID/password, PKI, ...) that are relevant to Federation activities? 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?
Electronic identity credentials use username/password pairs.
- 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:
Passwords are not stored or transmitted in clear text.
- 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 Service 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.
UGA uses Jasig CAS for single sign-on of campus applications. Session timeouts are
enforced and authentication renewal is forced for specific sites. Some legacy on-campus
application authenticate using LDAP.
- Are your primary electronic identifiers for people, such as “net ID,” eduPersonPrincipalName,
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?
Primary electronic identifiers are considered to be immutable and non-reassigned.
Exceptions are made in specific cases and only in extremis.
Electronic Identity Database
- 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?
The identity management database is maintained by a dedicated identity management
team in conjunction with stakeholders and authoritative sources. Data is generally
acquired and maintained from authoritative sources. Users must request changes to
identity data at the authoritative source in order for the identity management system
to be updated. Some exceptions exist; display name as distinct from legal name may
be changed at the individual’s request; similarly an option to select a ‘vanity’ email
alias is provided.
- What information in this database is considered “public information” and would be
provided to any interested party?
Name, email addresses and campus addresses are published online.
Uses of UGA’s Electronic Identity Credential System
- Please identify typical classes of applications for which your electronic identity
credentials are used within your own organization.
Applications at the University of Georgia using electronic identity credentials include
the student information system, cloud-based email system, web applications, secure
email system, wireless networks, and virtual (or physical) desktop logins. Electronic
Identity Credentials are not used for administrative access, access requiring elevated
privileges, access to authoritative records in the payroll or student information
system, or to low level access of databases, application hosts, network devices or
similar.
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.
- Would you consider your attribute assertions to be reliable enough to:
[x] control access to online 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?
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.
- What restrictions do you place on the use of attribute information that you might
provide to other Federation participants?
Information must only be used for the purpose for which it has been provided. It must
not be aggregated or release by Federation Partners to any third party, or used outside
the scope of the agreement.
- 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? No attributes released by UGA’s identity provider are subject to HIPPAA
regulations.
UGA requires assent of any party using federated identities for the release of name,
email address and eduPersonAffiliation.
Service Provider Information
Service 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 Identity Providers. Service 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.
- What attribute information about an individual do you require in order to manage access
to resources you make available to other Participants? Describe separately for each
service ProviderID that you have registered.
- 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.?
- 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?
- 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? InCommon Basics and Participating in InCommon 22
- If personally identifiable information is compromised, what actions do you take to
notify potentially affected individuals?
Other Information
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.
The University of Georgia is implementing Shibboleth 2.4.4 as part of the Gluu server
managed edition.
- Other Considerations: Are there any other considerations or information that you wish
to make known to other Federation participants with whom you might interoperate? For
example, are there concerns about the use of clear text passwords or responsibilities
in case of a security breach involving identity information you may have provided?
None.
