At the November TAC F2F, we discussed having a matrix of best practices by which to evaluate registered sites to help set expectations and create peer pressure. This is a preliminary set of suggested criteria.
Policy
- Participant Operational Practices (POP)
- (see comment below)
- Appropriate Contacts in Metadata
- Security Incident Response Policy
- (see comment below)
- IdP Terms of Use (targeted at the user)
- (see the Participation Agreement for basic requirements)
- SP Privacy Policy (targeted at the user)
- included in User Interface Elements in SP Metadata
- Attribute Release Policy
Technical Basics
- Metadata Consumption
- refresh metadata daily
- verify the XML signature
- check the expiration date
- X.509 Certificates in Metadata
- use of self-signed certificates with 2048-bit keys
- no unexpired certificates in metadata
- controlled migration of keys
- User Interface Elements in IdP/SP Metadata
- Requested Attributes in SP Metadata
- Service Endpoints in Metadata
Operational Maturity
- Maintaining Supported Software
- Operational Compliance with Metadata IOP
- Federation a "First Order" UI
- Discovery
- Choices offered should result in an "acceptable" experience
- SP User Interface
- Guidance for the flow through SP, DS, IdP
- Visual "branding" (e.g., InCommon logo in appropriate places)
- Appropriate help links/contacts at each step.
- Error Handling
- Look and Feel
- Useful Contacts
- Guidance for the flow through SP, DS, IdP
- Identity attributes
- Regular (event-driven? nightly?) synchronization with systems of record
- Documentation of locally-defined attributes
- Education
- For end-users
- Privacy
- Appropriate use
- Protection of secrets
- For service providers
- Privacy requirements
- Good UI practice
- For end-users
Maximizing the Federation
- Documented Attribute Release Process
- IdPs SHOULD support the
urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:persistentname identifier format and/or theeduPersonTargetedIDattribute- stored or computed? (there are advantages and disadvantages with each approach)
- Release of attributes w/o admin involvement (via consent or otherwise)
- Strawman: It is RECOMMENDED that
eduPersonScopedAffiliation,eduPersonEntitlement, andeduPersonTargetedIDbe released across the board, to all SPs. The five (5) remaining attributes listed on the InCommon Federation Attribute Summary page SHOULD be released to all SPs provided user consent is obtained. In both cases, we're referring to all SPs in the InCommon Federation.
- Strawman: It is RECOMMENDED that
Parked Items
- Keys of less than a certain age
- We should consider what, if any, age is actually "too old"
- Full saml2int conformance
- InCommon Implementation Profile conformance
- Could identify "exceptions to conformance" to highlight specific missing capabilities or could break profile into separate features in the matrix