Access Management for Digital Libraries in a well-connected World

ICDL 2004, New Delhi 1

Access Management for Digital Libraries in a well-connected World

John PaschoudSECURe Project

London School of Economics Library


Introduction• InfoSystems Engineer at the LSE Library - The

British Library of Political & Economic Science (“the World’s largest library dedicated to the social sciences”)

• …responsible for applied research projects, with external funding (JISC, EC, SURF, NSF…)

• I am not a “Dr.”, but an “Eng.”(ineer)• …so I have no competence to decide what

should be in the digital library• …but I do know how to build the shelves!


Summary

• Access Management – key to DL security

• Principles of Access Management

• What the UK has now: Athens, GRID PKI

• What the UK is moving towards

• Distributed technology: Shibboleth & SAML

• Demands on libraries & universities


Why is Access Management so important?

• Library users (and where they want to study from) more diverse

• Library resources (and where they are physically, legally held) more diverse

• Resource owners want to maximise $$$

• Users (researchers) need to maximise currency of their knowledge

• Libraries have limited $$$!


Principles of Access Management

• 4 processes: – Registration, AutheNtication, AuthoriZation,

Accounting

• Membership institutions (university, library, etc) must control Reg and AuthN

• Resource hosts must control AuthZ• Users must control own privacy (of attributes,

identity)• Security must be appropriate (for value of

resources protected)• Scalability must be cross-domain, global

(mostly) after Clifford Lynch, Coalition for Networked Information


UK Current Assets• Athens: username/password based service for unifying

access to digital library resources– Mainly licensed via JISC consortium deals– Over 2 million current usernames– Username/password database; maintenance devolved to

institutions– Around 500 HE and FE institutions use the Athens service– Around 200 licensed resources are controlled via Athens– A high proportion of the major academic publishers have now

implemented Athens• UK e-Science CA: service for issuing digital certificates

for access to Grid-type resources– Based on OpenCA software (with local modifications)– Verification of user identities carried out by trusted RAs around

the community– Current scale of operation a few hundred certificates per year


UK current challenges• Athens uses single centralised database

of users, and its own, proprietary protocols – Little international take-up as yet– Design lacks the flexibility and scalability of

more recent approaches

• e-Science CA is similarly centrally administered, and hard to scale up


UK current actions• AAA Programme (2002-2004)

– Experiments with newer AM technologies and architectural models

– (SECURe Project was the main vehicle to test and liaise with Shibboleth development)

• Foundation studies (2004):

– Digital Rights management

– Institutional Profiling

– Single sign-on technologies

– Feasibility of a national certificate issuing service

– Policy management with PERMIS

– Assessment of eduPerson & similar schemas

• Core Middleware Programme (2004-2006)

– Invites larger-scale experiments, tackling problems like “virtual organisations” of users, and secure resource access via university or library portals

• New Shibboleth-based service infrastructure (2004-2006)


What is Shibboleth? (ancient)•A word which was made the criterion by which to distinguish the Ephraimites from the Gileadites. The Ephraimites, not being able to pronounce “sh”, called the word sibboleth. See: Judges xii (Jewish or Christian Bible)

•Hence, the criterion, test, or watchword of a party; a party cry or pet phrase.

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

after Michael Gettes, Duke University & Shibboleth Project Team

http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict3&Database=web1913


What is Shibboleth? (modern)

• An initiative to develop an architecture and policy framework supporting the sharing - between domains - of secured web resources and services

• A project delivering an open source implementation of the architecture and framework

• Deliverables:–Software for Origins (campuses)–Software for Targets (vendors)–Operational Federations (scalable trust)



Shibboleth Goals• Use federated administration as the lever; have the

enterprise broker most services (authentication, authorization, resource discovery, etc.) in inter-realm interactions

• Provide security while not degrading privacy.–Attribute-based Access Control

• Foster interrealm trust fabrics: federations and virtual organizations

• Leverage campus expertise and build rough consensus• Influence the marketplace; develop where necessary• Support for heterogenity and open standards (SAML++)



Attribute-based Authorization• Identity-based approach

–The identity of a prospective user is passed to the controlled resource and is used to determine (perhaps with requests for additional attributes about the user) whether to permit access.

–This approach requires the user to trust the target to protect privacy.

•Attribute-based approach–Attributes are exchanged about a prospective user until the controlled resource has sufficient information to make a decision.

–This approach does not degrade privacy.after Michael Gettes, Duke University & Shibboleth Project Team


How does it work?

Hmmmm…. It’s magic.

(or: You can ask me later)



How does it work?

after SWITCH, Switzerland


Who else is interested?

• US NSF (they have paid for most of it)

• JISC, UK

• SWITCH, Switzerland (they have a whole-country Shibboleth Federation already)

• SURF, Netherlands

• Many resource owners (they need to follow what their market is doing)

• Many software suppliers (WebCT, Blackboard, uPortal)


Challenges for Libraries• Reliable Access Management will be a

requirement• “installing Shibboleth” is easy, but…• To do Access Management, a university or

library also needs:– Identity Management: directories of users and

attributes (and all the technical infrastructure)– Policies on user privacy and vendor licences– To collaborate, forming national or international

federations for access to resources

• Middleware is invisible (when it works!) – so justifying costs to management is not easy


Questions?

Project info: www.angel.ac.uk/SECURe

Contact: [email protected]

http://www.angel.ac.uk/SECURe




mailto:[email protected]






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Access Management for Digital Libraries in a well-connected World