Plan for w/c 09/07/12

Alex Bilbie / / Announcements

The plan for this week (w/c 09/07/12) is as follows:

  • Continue re-architecting my original OAuth server code into a composer library that is framework agnostic – the code is available at https://github.com/lncd/oauth2server/tree/develop.
  • Meet with Paul Stainthorp to understand (and watch) the difficulties user face access library resources.
  • Following the above, capture videos and screenshots of users accessing library resources so we can hopefully show at the end of the project how things have improved.
  • Write a blog post entitled “What is OAuth?”
  • Response to Tim Bray’s blog post on “OAuth 2 and friends, is way too hard for developers” to show how easy OAuth 2 actually is compared to OAuth 1.0a.
  • Announce the Linkey project on the OAuth mailing list.
  • Finish the project plan for JISC.

What is Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG)?

Alex Bilbie / / Overview

Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG) is a piece of server side software which provides secure access to corporate networks, systems and applications. It incorporates a number of different access technologies including VPN, HTTP reverse proxies and the Microsoft-developed technologies DirectAccess and Remote Desktop Services. Remote clients can access these corporate resources through a special web site that is hosted on an IIS server which is bound to the UAG software.

UAG includes built integrations for Microsoft Exchange Server (2003, 2007 and 2010), SharePoint Server (2003, 2007 and 2010), Remote Desktop Services and Citrix Presentational Services. It also includes a technology called SSL-VPN which allows for authentication integration with most 3rd party and custom software.

UAG can use a number of different authentication sources including Active Directory, LDAP, RADIUS and SecurID. Finally it can also “speak” SAML and ADFS.

Microsoft identifies a number of benefits of using UAG:

Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG) is designed to provide secure remote access in a way that extends application intelligence, security and control, and ease of use. Key benefits include:

Anywhere Access

Forefront UAG makes it easier to deliver secure remote access to your applications and resources, and improve employee and partner productivity, by combining an intelligent access policy engine with a variety of connectivity options including SSL VPN and Direct Access. Forefront UAG:

Empowers employees, partners, and vendors to be productive from virtually any device or location through integrated SSL VPN capabilities.
Delivers simple and secure access optimised for applications such as SharePoint, Exchange, and Dynamics CRM.
Extends networking connectivity with Windows Direct Access to existing infrastructure and legacy applications.

Integrated Security

Forefront UAG improves the security in remote access scenarios by enforcing granular access controls and policies that are tailored to the applications being published, the identity of the user, and the health status of the device being used. Forefront UAG further improves security by enabling strong authentication to applications and mitigating the risks of downloaded data from unmanaged devices. Forefront UAG:

Protects IT assets through fine-grained and built-in policies that provide access to sensitive data based on identity and endpoint health.
Easily integrates with Active Directory and enables a variety of strong authentication methods.
Limits exposure and prevent data leakage to unmanaged endpoints.

Simplified Management

Forefront UAG offers a single platform through which to deliver and manage remote access. With built in policies and configurations for common applications and devices, you can gain more control, more efficient management, greater visibility, and lower total cost of ownership. Forefront UAG:

Consolidates remote access infrastructure and management.
Simplifies deployment and ongoing tasks through wizards and built-in policies.
Reduces support costs by delivering a simplified connectivity experience for users.

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/forefront/unified-access-gateway.aspx

How UAG can help us

At the university we have a number of existing web based applications which will benefit from having UAG integration.

We currently have SharePoint and Exchange 2003 installations (which will soon be upgraded to 2010) which UAG can natively integrate with.

We use Blackboard Learn as our LMS and Zendesk as our support desk software, both of which have can use SAML for single sign on.

We are also looking into potentially using UAG as the access point for Windows 7 thin client access.

How can UAG work with OAuth?

As UAG can use SAML to communicate with services it means that we can use the OAuth 2.0 assertions specification to create a translation framework between SAML assertions and OAuth tokens. This will extend some of the work that we’ve originally done on our OAuth server and the updated code will be published.

One of the outcomes of this project will be a case study (with open source code examples) on how UAG and an OAuth server can work together (though because we don’t know how this may work at the moment it could be that it turns out they can’t work together…) and on this blog we will document our experience.

Linkey, Chapter One

Alex Bilbie / / Nutshell

It’s 9am on Monday 25th June 2012 and the Linkey project is officially kicking off.

What is Linkey

Linkey is a JISC funded research project under the Access and Identity Management programme. It will run from June 2012 to May 2013.

The project will provide a detailed case study of the use of OAuth as an authorisation protocol here at the University of Lincoln. Working closely with the university Library, we will examine how the OAuth 2.0 specification can be integrated into a ‘single sign on’ environment alongside Microsoft’s Unified Access Gateway.

Our intention is to show how OAuth 2.0 can be used as part of an access and identity environment in higher education that improves the student experience by:

  1. A consistent and user centric sign-­in experience.
  2. A richer exchange of user information between applications.
  3. Easier development and implementation of new products.

Why?

A recent review of the university’s library systems and services indicated that we had around 10 core applications which provide access to over 150 other resources, all of which have different methods of authenticating users – some used LDAP to authenticate users (and so users use their network username and password) and others had their own database of users (which require a different passwords – and in some cases usernames – and every single one of these flows have a different sign in experience; some are web based with various designs, others are desktop based with a mixture of custom sign-in windows and Microsoft sign-in screens. Over 80% of user queries sent to the Library’s support email address around about problems accessing resources.

Outside of the library there are over 100 other systems and services that have visibility in the business processes across the university which also authenticate in a number of different ways.

All of these different authentication flows lead to a very inconsistent user experience and consistently for the last few years this has been highlighted in numerous student surveys.

Who?

I (Alex Bilbie) will be undertaking the majority of the work on the project. This will include researching technological solutions, engaging with end users, developing the open source OAuth 2.0 PHP server and working on the final implementation.

The principal user on the project will be Dave Masterson, Head of Electronic Library Services, who has been charged with improving the usability of our Library’s online services.

The project manager for the project will be Joss Winn, Senior Lecturer in CERD and co-ordinator of the LNCD group.

Tim Simmonds, Online Services Team Manager, will assume management and oversight of the technical implementation of both OAuth and UAG.

When?

The high level work plan is a below:

Month 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Initiate project X
Community Engagement X X X X X X X X X X X X
Gather user requirements X X X X X X X X X X
Evaluate available technologies and options X X X X
Design Solution X X X
Technical development and implementation X X X X X X X
Write case study X X X X X X X X X X X
Write/submit conference paper X X X X X X
OAuth workshop  X
Project close X

You can follow the day to day activity on our Pivotal Tracker project page.

Outcomes

The anticipated outcomes of the project are:

  1. A case study of our implementation of OAuth 2.0 together with Microsoft’s UAG product. We will provide draft sections of the final case study in 12 monthly blog posts, allowing for early peer-review.
  2. Continued development of our open source OAuth 2.0 server (based on my server code), including an implementation of the SAML 2.0 Bearer Assertion Profiles for OAuth 2.0 specification and other relevant extensions to the main standard. We aim to produce a ‘drop in’ solution for OAuth 2.0, in a similar way that the SimpleSAMLphp project supports SAML implementations.
  3. A public workshop on the use of OAuth 2.0 in Further and Higher Education.
  4. A conference/journal paper, based on our case study.
  5. Expertise in the implementation of an institution-wide infrastructure for AIM.