Federation vs. Synchronization

19.04.2012 15:00-16:00 Moderator:

What Federation is About – in Theory and in Practice

Synchronization of Identities and their distribution to many different identity stores is a common approach in IAM. However, Federation is gaining momentum massively – and that will further increase with the growth in Cloud Computing. However, even there you’ll find synchronization approaches, like the ones supported by the upcoming SCIM standard. Finding the balance between Federation and Synchronization is an art of itself. In this session, you’ll learn how to deal with that.

In our advisories we’ve learned that customers in practice have a much broader understanding of Cloud Computing than in theory. In theory, Identity Federation is limited to some few standards like SAML, Shibboleth, and some others. In practice, federation is understood as a much broader concept which involves sometimes proprietary integration with the “login” into social networks. It includes classical Web Access Management. And it requires Federation in different ways. Understanding the different concepts and approaches and finding your path through the jungle of opportunities is a challenge – this session is your compass.

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Federation or Synchronization – the Future of the Cloud

In this panel industry experts will discuss the evolution in the cloud. For quite a while, SAML was the de-facto standard. Right now, other lightweight approaches (with somewhat different features) like OAuth are gaining momentum as well as SCIM, which supports the proprietary APIs of cloud services. What is the future? Will some approach win or will they co-exist? What fits really to the needs of the customer? Or do we need fundamentally different approaches?

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Exchanging Metadata through Different Federations on a Global Scale

One of the most successful advancements in IT within the education and research sector in recent years has been the emergence of identity federations. There are now over 27 identity federations worldwide, operating a very successful standards-based solution for access and identity transactions. The REFEDs group, coordinated by TERENA, is a working group representing all of these federations. REFEDs is actively developing new tools and concepts to improve and enhance the work of identity federations. Nicole will talk about the evolving nature of metadata within the context of identity federations and the challenges involved in exchanging this metadata on a global scale - including legal challenges, the PEER project, eduGain and bilateral federation.

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