Paz, Viviani; Tate, Nick
Description
institutions of higher education and research in Australia, and between these institutions and other organizations worldwide the development of a trust federation in which its members agree to abide by a common set of rules, policies and agreements is necessary.
The Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training in order to address this requirement is funding a project called the Australian Access Federation (AAF), which will develop the federation policy framework and...[Show more] deploy the infrastructure required to enable access to online resources and services for the Australian higher education and research sector. The infrastructure deployed is based on two technologies: Shibboleth and Public Key Infrastructure.
The Australian Access Federation Project focuses on three components:
1. The first component will develop the overarching federation governance and polices including legal agreements between the institutions and the federation.
2. The second component will develop specific policies and technical implementation and rollout of PKI. This project component builds on the e-Security Framework project managed by AusCERT and that has developed a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) testbed with AusCERT acting as the top level Root Certification Authority (CA) for the Australian sector. Within the PKI model, universities are able to issue digital certificates that are chained back to the AusCERT Root Certification Authority. Under the PKI testbed certificates are issued to secure the server to server communications between Identity Providers and Service Providers within the MAMS testbed federation. AusCERT is under negotiations with vendors to embed its Root Certificate into diverse vendors’ trust lists in order to facilitate the use of certificates within the sector.
3. The third component of this project will be carried out by the MAMS project team and will develop specific policies, technical implementation and rollout of Shibboleth. The existing MAMS project has developed a Shibboleth Testbed Federation, which is already used by a number of universities.
This presentation will discuss the implementation of the first two components of the Australian Access Federation project.
About the speakers
Viviani Paz is the Security Assurance Manager for AusCERT (The Australian National Computer Emergency Response Team) based at The University of Queensland. Prior to joining AusCERT in 1995, Viviani worked in a range of IT areas including: system and network security; system programming and administration; and software testing and verification in the Commercial and Academic sectors for over a decade.
Viviani is the Policy Designer and Project Manager for the eSecurity Framework Project, in which a PKI environment is being developed to assist Australian Universities' collaboration and interoperation. She is also the Project Manager for the Australian Access Federation Project (AAF). The AAF project will develop the federation policy framework and deploy the infrastructure required to enable access to online resources and services for the Australian higher education and research sector. The infrastructure deployed is based on two technologies: Shibboleth and Public Key Infrastructure.
The Australian Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT) provides a single, trusted point of contact in Australia for the Internet community to deal with computer security incidents and their prevention. AusCERT's mission is to support and improve community awareness, representation and communication regarding computer security, both locally and internationally, by being the leading source of impartial and reliable computer security information and expertise for its members.
AusCERT is a full member of the international Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, FIRST and Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (APCERT).
