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 10^th, 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: Identity Management Team

Email address: idm@uga.edu

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 CAS 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.