Attribute Authorities (AAs) play one of the most critical security roles in the infrastructure. The data they issue and information they assert must be highly trusted by the parties relying upon it. To that end, AARC recommends that certain practices be adopted by the operators of such services: AARC-G071 Guidelines for Secure Operation of Attribute Authorities. The requirements listed include best practices in encryption, hosting environments, logging and attribute management to name but a few.
Collaborations can either host their own AA, or - more commonly - engage the services of an AA operator or an AAI platform to host their collaboration structure. In this latter case, most of the onus of securing and operating the AA falls on the operator, and implementing the AA service is part of the Snctfi requirements.
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- attribute authorities that permit binding of properties to entities by means of lookup in which the entity whose properties are sought is the key in the look-up (‘pull model’)
- attribute authorities that issue (usually integrity-protected and, optionally, confidentiality-protected) statements in which attributes are asserted (‘push model’)
If you are running your own AAI should go through each requirement and analyse if your infrastructure supports it. In many cases, Research Communities choose to outsource their AAI to a trusted operator who should also support these requirements.
Recommendations:
- AA Operators should abide by the requirements of AARC-G071, to attain and maintain the trust of their relying parties.
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