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Security: Trend Report: Identity Management

10/20/2005

By Doug Gale

In this latest update on “Everything You Need to Know About IdM,” columnist Doug Gale lays out the old, the new, and the soon to be must-haves.



INCREASINGLY, A HIGHER EDUCATION institution’s ability to provide services over the network depends on its ability to authenticate, authorize, and provision user access rights in a unified, consistent, straightforward, and effective way. That’s easy to say but devilishly hard to do, and far too complex to cover in a single column!

Still, as we wade into this Byzantine morass of identity management (IdM), it helps to remember that there are four underlying components:

  1. Identification (your name or network/system identifier)
  2. Authentication (proof you’re you)
  3. Authorization (what resources you have permission to access)
  4. Directory (information about you and what you are allowed to do)

For now, let’s look at the first two: identification and authentication. Future columns will consider authorization and directory services.

Identification

At the heart of these schemes is how individuals are identified. Over time, single names evolved into first and last names, and more recently, into unique identifiers such as the Social Security Number (SSN). Unhappily, the use of SSNs as identifiers in higher ed creates identity theft and privacy problems, and d'es not easily adjust to our international community. We’re left with the need for a unique identifer or name.

A unique identifier is more than just a long string of numbers (see box, page 18). For example, at Indiana and George Mason (VA) universities, each student is assigned a unique and persistent multidigit identifier (used by the student information system), as well as a unique but easier to remember eight-character network ID and password that can be mapped back to the longer multidigit identifier. Defining a unique identifier is often a politically contentious process.

Authentication

Authentication (AuthN) is used to prove in some fashion that an individual is who he says he is. We can categorize that proof in three ways: something you have (e.g., a key or a birth certificate), something you know (a password), or something you are (e.g., your fingerprints). (See “Security: It’s Not All About Hackers,” Campus Technology, September 2005.)

The higher education environment involves multiple authentications: A student must prove her identity when she first enrolls. This is usually done by the admissions or registrar’s office, and is normally based upon a series of documents (such as high school transcripts) that the student sends the institution. Some institutions are beginning to require arriving students to show a picture ID, although that creates problems in enrolling distance ed students, and may not be any more secure than the traditional process. Jack Suess, vice president for Information Technology at the University of Maryland-Baltimore and co-chair of the Educause/Internet2 Security Task Force, recommends the identity proofing standards developed by the federal government as being both quantitative and flexible. The government’s E-Authentication Web site can be found at www.cio.gov/eauthentication.



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