Identity Matters

For those of you who are currently using, testing, or just considering Symlabs Federated Identity Suite, I thought I should sneak in here and insert a mention that we've released version 3.5.0 with support for Windows Cardspace Information Cards.

This update provides Security Token Service (STS) in the Identity Provider (IdP) Server, and also as a standalone STS module that can be used independently. In addition, the IdP Server now supports Cardspace logins as an authentication mechanism, and it includes Managed Card Provider functionality for generation and ongoing management of Information Cards. If you'd like to try out these features, you can download an evaluation copy of the new version from our website at http://symlabs.com/products/federated-identity-suite/download.

Along the way, we made a number of internal improvements, for example we changed the credential verification process to squeeze out some additional performance. And, to make building secure identity-aware database applications easier in a Liberty Web Services environment, we've added some example implementations of ID-DAP Web Services Clients (WSC) and Web Services Providers (WSP) to the package that will give you a good head start.

So, there's a bit of something for everybody in this version, and you can be sure we'll continue to focus on adding versatility, reliability, and performance to Symlabs Federated Identity Suite. If there are any suggestions you'd like to give us for things to work on, please feel free to drop by our website and leave us some feedback.

Jeff Zukowski

To continue the discussion of how security and trust seem to be taking shape for applications and services in mobile networks, let me explain in a little more detail about the infrastructure that is evolving, and how its component parts need to interact.

In order to deliver the examples described in the first part, network operators (I'll call them Telcos for convenience, but the world is changing and so are the players) generally want and need players of another type, the application service providers (ASPs), to step in and help to create the complete end-to-end service that a user experiences. By providing applications and services that run over the Telco's network, ASPs provide a valuable piece of the puzzle. This is because the level of demand, pace of development, and variety of possible services would strain even a Telco's resources if they tried to chase them all and develop them in-house, by themselves. But, in order to take advantage of ASPs as part of their services architecture, Telcos must expose their network infrastructure to these outside companies.

An ASP-Telco "symbiotic" relationship has the potential to create some truly interesting services, but it requires that each party take risks. For ASPs, the risk of innovation is pretty high - if they create something that nobody wants, it can be a total loss. And even if they have success, they need to be careful to protect their intellectual property. But, the ones that are successful can make money on a global scale through the power of a Telco channel, and the capital investment required for an ASP is modest compared to a network, so there is plenty of motivation for risk-taking. For Telcos, a rapid path to new service offerings with a big selection of potential ASP partners (therefore a big selection of innovative services) translates into maximum efficiency for investing their own resources. More important, it delivers the ultimate reward of an exciting network that attracts new subscribers, retains existing ones, and generates new traffic while also increasing existing voice and data volumes. In today's highly competitive environment, that's a path they simply must be on to ensure their survival.

What about that thorny issue of opening the network to “outsiders”? That, of course, is the major risk for Telcos. By doing this, they let others introduce components that could severely impact their traffic engineering or interfere with network management. But, the tools they already have are generally sufficient to maintain control of their network resources. The more unpredictable and unmanageable problem is security – and this doesn't just mean security for the Telco, but for any information flowing through the network.

In the type of infrastructure that we're heading for, where services are created through a mashup of applications and transports, the protection of sensitive information is a very complex issue. Sensitive information is a multi-dimensional problem in this environment because every party involved in the service transaction has some of their own at stake, and must respect some from the others.

For a Telco, the first task is protecting access to their network, which they have historically accomplished by being “restrictive”. In the new environment, maintaining an interface that appeals to a wide range of ASPs is critical to attracting them. That means letting them express their applications fully on the network without forcing them into major developments to match some unique API. At the same time, Telcos need to keep on ensuring the safety of information that they move about to protect the personal data and identities of their users.

ASPs, on the other hand, during their shorter history, have operated in a more open and collaborative environment than Telcos. Keeping their user information and identities secure has been something they've managed to accomplish while inter-operating with a wide variety of partners. But, they have enjoyed the freedom to manage their applications in a far less demanding and far more forgiving service environment than the infrastructure we're heading toward. Soon, minor issues they handled easily such as obsolete or redundant identity information in their user directory, or incomplete data and record update problems, become major problems in a global-scale service which is supported and branded by a Telco that demands a spotless image to make gains against their competitors. If they exposed customers to identity theft, massive spamming, or other scams through their service, they'd be responsible for a public relations disaster befalling their Telco partner which would seriously damage the relationship, not to mention their own public image.

In order for this architecture to work nicely, all the players need to be able to trust the others to do their part for security. They can see that that this requires a common set of standards that everyone embraces for these security functions, one that lets any ASP work with any Telco to create end-to-end services for any customer. Certainly vendor-specific standards could be used (and doubtless will be in some ways – more on that later), but a more flexible solution is an open standard that ensures ASPs and Telcos can inter-operate no matter what their platform choices. From our view so far, SAML 2.0 and ID-WSF are ideally suited for this, and are well positioned to become the solution of choice. These standards are a centerpiece of our identity management products, so a legitimate cry of favoritism is acknowledged, but in actuality this is not a heavily biased opinion. We support other standards, including vendor-specific ones, in Symlabs Federated Identity Suite, and this position is based on our work with all of them. It is a collection of our experiences in customer deployments, and perhaps more important in demonstrations and trials with the larger community of organizations seeking good real-world solutions that has led us to this viewpoint.

This is a good place to pause for now, but in the next (and last, I promise) part of this discussion I'll go into a bit more detail on how SAML 2.0 and ID-WSF standards can operate to everyone's benefit in this architecture.

Pablo Sánchez

We've recently been involved in some technology demonstrations that I think have a lot to say about how the future of security and trust in mobile networks is taking shape. As everyone can now see, a new breed of mobile applications is emerging that extend the Web 2.0 social networking and mashup metaphors into a pervasive space that users will tailor to serve them in the context activities that involve dynamic communities of their daily lives. Some good examples are coming into focus, and one in particular that we participated in took the prize at Orange's API and Widget contest in Portugal this April.

Most people are regular users of various mapping and location services on their desktop, and now a lot of folks use location services on their mobile phones as well. When coupled with GPS-enabled phones, these familiar applications take on a new usefulness by reacting to changes in the user's environment. Similarly most people have established communities that shape their online activities according to relationships and interests. While for some it's still email and IM that manage their communication with those communities, for many it's rapidly evolving from a combination of those plus Web 2.0 tools on the desktop to mobile interfaces that give them rich interaction with their friends, families, business associates, interests, and urges whenever and wherever they choose. And it's becoming clear to many of us that this is a sweet spot for mobile applications - not just what media can I access, but how can I utilize it now, who can I share it with now, where can we meet to experience it now, and what can make accomplishing that easy for me ... now.

The application that most recently prompted me to write about this is Wizi. Wizi is the free location sharing and traffic information application that won first prize in the Orange API and Widget contest. (You can get it at www.wizi.com.) It has obvious uses for families or business people who are coordinating a schedule because it combines some key attributes of daily life in a dynamic, real-time way - where relevant people are, their destinations or meeting places, how they'll get there, and what's in the way. It can do similar duty for groups with other interests, such as when you want to choose between attending an after-work party, joining some friends for a dinner and a movie, or going a football game where you'll see lots of acquaintances who cheer your club. And, these are the obvious uses - only the collective imagination of a Web 2.0 enabled world can tell how it goes from there.

So, what does a company that specializes in Identity Management, Virtual Directories, and LDAP have to do with any of this? I'll suggest an answer to that by posing a different question: how much of the information that needs to be shared in the scenarios above would YOU like to have cross all groups? While you may want your family members to have your location at any moment in time, is that something you'd like visible to all the members of the football club? And for that matter, would you be pleased if your preferences such as football club or other affiliations was open to all your business colleagues? For most people, their real-time location and their affiliations are things they want to share very selectively. And, after you give it some thought, you'll probably agree that we're only scratching the surface in conceptualizing the schemes we'll really want to have for managing information that discloses our real-time, activity-centric, choice-driven self as it becomes a dynamic attribute in our daily lives. It's about TRUST - who and what gets it, when, and where.

In the collection of networks and applications that support delivering this vision on mobile phones, there needs to be an infrastructure that allows this identity information to be accessed and moved quickly, shared securely, managed actively, delivered flexibly, and operated on automatically in order for the end-user experience to be powerful, satisfying, and easy-to-use. And, if it isn't, then there won't be a sweet spot, after all. This, of course, is where Symlabs specializes - in that infrastructure and in the sharing and management of that information. That's why we've been working with Wizi on APIs, with BT and Intel on Identity Capable Platform (more on that later), and with Liberty Alliance on Advanced Client and Trusted Modules. Sound complex? It is, but in Part 2 I'll talk a little bit about how those technologies come together and how they work to deliver an efficient, trust-enabled platform that hits the sweet spot.

Pablo Sánchez

The time has come to finish up this discussion of the new Remote Administration Server (RAS) in version 4.0 of Symlabs LDAP Proxy and Symlabs Virtual Directory Server by describing how it actually brings a lot of benefit to a production environment. This, of course, is what our customers care about more than the technology itself (and far more than a philosophy debate with the MOTCL* (*see last post)).

Refreshing your memory from last time, before RAS (i.e., before version 4.0) each instance of Symlabs LDAP Proxy or Symlabs Virtual Directory Server and its associated instance of DSGUI were tightly coupled, one-to-one. For example, every server running Symlabs LDAP Proxy was also running it's DSGUI interface, and while this provided a nice graphical configuration and management tool, you had to access it through that server, and you could only manage instances running on the same server when you did. As production environments routinely started having lots of instances on lots of servers, our customers started asking for a way to simplify and consolidate their management capabilities.

Now with RAS, the architecture has been re-worked so that there are several options for managing complex environments, allowing customers to create the one that makes it easiest for them. The "core engine" in Symlabs LDAP Proxy or Symlabs Virtual Directory Server no longer needs its tightly-coupled graphical environment for configuration and management (as it was before version 3.0, when MOTCL roamed the earth). Instead, RAS allows an instance of DSGUI running on any machine to configure and manage an instance of the core engine running in any server, using fully secure communication of course. One ring to rule them all.

Using the RAS server is fully optional, so if you want run a local DSGUI in the server along the instance of its core engine, you can still do so ... and start managing multi-server configurations the moment you need to, and not an instant before. The rapid prototyping that DSGUI users are used to has not been lost, in fact you haven't lost the flexibility to manage any instance of Symlabs LDAP Proxy or Symlabs Virtual Directory Server from the command line, if that's what works for you. You have simply gained the flexibility to configure and manage them all easily from one place, or from several places using whatever division of responsibility and toolkit matches your organization needs.

Also, with the introduction of RAS we changed the way in which configurations are stored, so they are now platform independent. If you have several RAS instances running on different types of servers, you can simply copy and move the configurations among the servers with just a mouse click. This should come in very handy, especially in production environments where several instances have to be kept current, such as when fail-over scenarios or server replications are managed. It will also be useful where different environments are maintained for preproduction and production, or where different OS are used, for example initial testing done on a Windows desktop with production running Solaris. Now configurations can easily be created on technician's desktop, verified there, and  moved to a preproduction environment to begin load and performance testing in seconds, all without having to worry about changing environments, desktop sharing, or other cumbersome annoyances.

I can keep on talking about implementation details for hours, but at this point you should get the picture, so the next step is to prove it to yourself. Just download a free evaluation version from http://symlabs.com and check out how useful this new feature is. We are always interested in opinions (including from MOTCL) to help us keep improving the features offered in our products, so after you try it, any feedback you want to send us will be greatly appreciated.

Fernando García Vegas

At last we've wrapped everything up, and the new version 4.0 of Symlabs Virtual Directory Server and Symlabs LDAP Proxy is now official, so I can finally take a moment to elaborate on the Remote Administration Server (RAS) feature that I briefly mentioned last time.

"In the beginning ... was the command line" (an interesting, but a bit outdated essay by famous author Neal Stephenson) is the best way to describe how our family of products started. A long time ago (in a galaxy far away) Symlabs began with an extremely fast and robust multi-protocol proxy engine, designed to give large LDAP deployments functionalities that existing LDAP servers could not provide. It was impressive by itself, and it has become the "core engine" of our products today, since its extensive programming capability has allowed us to keep on building new features and functions. Even now, we're pretty sure that we have barely scratched the surface of what can be done with that engine.

But, let's face it, it was not the easiest tool to configure and work with - its extreme "command line" approach was bucking the trend that most enterprises were following. That's why we created DSGUI, our name for a Java-based graphical user interface that makes managing configurations much easier. DSGUI allows end users to start working with both Symlabs LDAP Proxy and Symlabs Virtual Directory Server in a matter of minutes. This feature has allowed us to serve more than the "big IT & Telco" shops that had the resources to work without a GUI, and has been a success from the start for a wide range of customers.

But, the addition of DSGUI was not without some resistance, as a few developers (let's call them "Masters of the command-line", from now on - MOTCL) still hold the idea that graphical interfaces are for the weak and feeble. Still, DSGUI's success helped demonstrate that MOTCL are not always right (some may say never, but that's another story), so after we shipped it we decided to take the next step and listen to more customer feedback about how to continue improving the usability of our products. And, that's how our Remote Administration Server (RAS) functionality came to be.

RAS lets us take full advantage of the graphical user interface and at the same time adapts our products to fit in all possible environments, even those that do not have a graphical environment for some reason. It gives end users the ability to manage Symlabs LDAP Proxy and Symlabs Virtual Directory Server configurations regardless of where they are installed, and also allows them to deal with several instances at the same time. So, if an environment has six different instances of Symlabs LDAP Proxy running, let's say four in the local data center and two in different parts of the country, RAS allows them all to be managed from one place.

Think of RAS as a "connector" between the core engine I described earlier and the DSGUI graphical configuration utility. It works as a daemon process running on the server along with the core engine, communicating between any instance of the core engine in Symlabs LDAP Proxy or Symlabs Virtual Directory Server, and any instance of DSGUI.

OK, so that's a bit about where RAS came from and basically what it is. Next time, I'll finish this discussion with a more in-depth explanation of how to actually use RAS and DSGUI to simplify configuration and management chores in a complex environment. Meanwhile, I'll refer to my earlier comment and recommend that you fill some spare time with Neal Sthephenson's book "Cryptonomicon", which should be mandatory reading for anyone working in the security and identity management field.

Fernando García Vegas