Participants

Proposers
NameOrganisation

Slavek Licehammer

CESNET
GN4-3 project team
NameOrganisationRole

Adrian Rosinec

CESNETDeveloper, TIM
CESNETMentor


Stakeholders
Name

Organisation

Role 
KITRelated topic Instant User Provisioning and Deprovisioning
GÉANTeduTEAMS Service Owner
CESNETeduTEAMS Developer
Stakeholder engagements
DateName(s)OrganisationNotes
21.11.19

Christos Kanellopoulos

GÉANTInitial stakeholder kick-off
17.12.19--Sprint Demo 2.1
19.03.20--Sprint Demo 2.3
05/20Christos KanellopoulosGÉANTOngoing discussion to make the WinConnector available through eduTEAMS.
06/20-Faculty of informatics MUCommunity use case
02.07.20--Sprint Demo 2.6

Activity overview

Description

Identity provisioning and deprovisioning are a necessity for building modern authentication and authorization infrastructures. They are straightforward yet technically complicated part of identity and access management. The basic idea is to deliver identity and authorization information to the managed services, which is complicated by a lack of applicable standards in this area. Therefore, most of the Identity and access management solutions rely on a custom solution for provisioning.
This activity extends existing IAM capabilities by implementing a connector to easily provision data to services hosted on Windows OS based on SSH.

Activity goals

The goal of this activity is to create a production ready prototype based on the existing proof of concept, integrate it with eduTEAMS and provide it as an open source tool to the community.

Activity Details

Technical details

Identity and access management components used in GÉANT eduTEAMS are not an exception. Thus they rely on custom connectors to deliver authorization data to managed services, usually utilizing standardized protocols like SSH or LDAP. Although this solution is not technically ideal, it works for most services operated on Unix-based operating systems. For services operated on Windows OS, there might be a problem to transfer the required data to the machines unless the service itself has an API for that, which is not always the case.
To overcome this obstacle, CESNET and Masaryk University piloted a simple connector for provisioning data to services hosted on Windows OS. The connector uses SSH as a data transfer protocol, which is currently supported by the latest Windows OS. SSH runs Powershell script on a destination which is customized for managed service, and its responsibility is to configure the service with provisioned identity and access control information.

This topic is related to Instant User Provisioning and Deprovisioning. Where possible, technical synergies shall be identified to the benefit of both solutions.

Business case

This product eases the way of integration IAM into Windows based systems. It enables identity management systems to interact directly with services hosted on Windows and allows administrators to easily mange these systems. This can not only be used directly by institution with existing IDM in place, but also by GÉANT services like eduTEAMS.

Risks
  • First time a project was proposed and will be implemented by TIM → unknown outcome


Data protection & Privacy
  • The product handles identity, authentication and authorization
  • No or only a few real user data are processed by the prototype developed by the Incubator


Definition of Done (DoD)


RequirementState

A working prototype is implemented based on the POC

(tick)

The concept and implementation is documented

(tick)

The prototype is tested with the eduTEAMS platform

(tick)

The source code it provided to the open source community

(tick)


Sustainability

The aim of this project is to create an easy to use, adoptable software solution to provision server users and provide this tool to the community.

As part of a case study the solution will be implemented for a Czech University (Faculty of informatics MU) which will continue to use the solution afterwards.

CESNET will continue to use and maintain the software for the foreseeable future.

Besides this, the solution shall be adjusted to the needs of eduTEAMS. The solution will be provided to the eduTEAMS service task to be integrated into the GÉANT service.

Activity Results

Results

The following results were created and delivered:

Meetings

Date

Activity

Owner

Minutes

13 Nov 2019

Kickoff meeting

-
Every FridayWeekly Scrum-
Every TuesdayWeekly Chat-

Documents