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)
• Contacts in Metadata
• Security Incident Response Policy

Technical Basics

• Service Endpoints in Metadata
• X.509 Certificates in Metadata
• User Interface Elements in IdP/SP Metadata
• Requested Attributes in SP Metadata

Operational Maturity

• Metadata Consumption
• Maintaining Supported Software
• Federation User Experience
• Error Handling
• Education
  • For end-users
    • Privacy
    • Appropriate use
    • Protection of secrets
  • For service providers
    • Privacy requirements
    • Good UI practice

Maximizing the Federation

• Documented Attribute Release Process
• IdPs SHOULD support the urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:persistent name identifier format and/or the eduPersonTargetedID attribute
  • 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, and eduPersonTargetedID be 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.

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
• Identity attributes
  • Regular (event-driven? nightly?) synchronization with systems of record
  • Documentation of locally-defined attributes
• Reporting of statistics