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Personal data of users are stored in a central clustered LDAP server. Group memberships that provide access to services and Wiki spaces, as well as the user data are managed via a web-based administration portal. Attribute queries, as defined in SAML and implemented in Shibboleth, are used to aggregate information from the campus IdP and the DARIAH Attribute Authority implemented in the DARIAH IdP. A registration mechanism based on a central DARIAH SP ensures that all personal data that are are needed, but not provided by the Campus IdPs, are collected as self-asserted data from the user. The DARIAH IdP thus acts as an IdP-AA, but not as an SP, i.e. it is not a proxy.
ELIXIR
The overall ELIXIR architecture is split into three main layers. The bottom layer comprises external authentication providers and serves as a source of identities to the middle layer, i.e. the ELIXIR AAI layer. More specifically, the ELIXIR AAI layer consists of the ELIXIR Directory as a main storage of user data, related services to manage the user data, and services to authenticate the user. The upper layer is composed of relying services for the ELIXIR users. Those relying services can utilise data from the ELIXIR directory. A brief overview of each component follows.
External authentication providers authenticate an end-user and deliver their authenticated (external) identity to the ELIXIR AAI. ELIXIR supports both Home IdPs (e.g. via eduGAIN inter-federation service) and Common IdPs (Google, LinkedIn and ORCID).
The ELIXIR Proxy IdP is an authentication proxy that authenticates an end-user using an external IdP or their internal ELIXIR password (if they don’t have an external identity), and relays the authenticated identity and associated attributes to the Relying services. The ELIXIR Proxy only passes authenticated users’ attributes to the Relying services for authorisation. Associated with the ELIXIR Proxy IdP there is also a service where an end-user can consolidate his/her external identities and the ELIXIR identity, by logging in using the ELIXIR password and/or two or more external IdPs consecutively. The ELIXIR Proxy IdP can also support step-up authentication or credential translation.
The ELIXIR Directory is a central storage which stores identity and attribute information on each ELIXIR user. ELIXIR users can use the attribute self-management service where they can self-manage some of their own attributes (such as preferred language and ELIXIR password), register other identifiers (ORCID, social ID), change their ELIXIR nickname associated to the attributes in the ELIXIR Directory.
ELIXIR must ensure to provide some of its services only to the users with an affiliation with academic institution. The ELIXIR AAI will provide a bona fide based status application for bioinformatics researchers, so that the community can vouch for them.
The ELIXIR group management puts strong emphasis on delegation of rights. Group managers can add users to groups via invitation, directly and, in the future, by importing group information from external systems. All group information is exposed to the ELIXIR Directory.
The Dataset authorisation management component is used by ELIXIR users where they can apply for, and dataset owners approve, access rights to datasets. The access rights are exported to the ELIXIR Directory and/or directly to the Relying service that enforces the access rights.