Authentication and Authorisation for Research and Collaboration (AARC)

Project Information

AARC

Grant agreement ID: 653965

DOI

10.3030/653965

Project closed

EC signature date 17 April 2015

Start date 1 May 2015

End date 30 April 2017

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Research Infrastructures

Total cost

€ 2 950 060,00

EU contribution

€ 2 941 060,00

Coordinated by

GEANT VERENIGING
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - AARC (Authentication and Authorisation for Research and Collaboration (AARC))

Reporting period: 2016-05-01 to 2017-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The AARC vision is to create a future in which research/e-Infrastructures cooperate seamlessly using interoperable AAI.
AARC champions the adoption of federated access to support research collaborations and eScience in general. This will allow researchers to use the credentials they already have to access different services regardless of the research and/or e-Infrastructure that operates them.

The objectives of the AARC project are:
* To design of an integrated architecture based on federated access that links the existing AAIs. This blueprint will guide research collaborations and infrastructures in building their own AAIs;
* To provide recommendations on a number of technical existing components that can be used as part of an AAI;
• To harmonise procedures and policies to ease cross-discipline collaboration;
• To offer a diversified training package to increase the adoption of federated access.

For more information please refer to:
https://aarc-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/AARC-leaflet-2015.pdf

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

One of the main achievements of the project is to offer a place where AAI aspects are discussed by different communities. Traditionally, EC projects cluster partners in the same field; AARC instead works horizontally among e-Infrastructures, research infrastructures, libraries and R&E national identity federations.

The main achievements are captured below and grouped per area:
- Training (https://aarc-project.eu/training/) –
• Federation 101 module [FED101]
• 3 training for SPs [TRAININGSP] for DARIAH and Elixir
• a plug-fest training for developers [plugfeest]
• train-the-trainer training on attribute release [ATTRELEASE]
• two value propositions training for libraries (see library Toolkit)
• AARC infrastructure toolkit [InfraToolkit],


- Outreach – Beside the website and the leafleat, the project has delivered a number of presentations at relevant events as well as dedicated meeting with key stakeholders, such as libraries, research infrastructures and e-infrastructures

- Architecture – the key concepts of the blueprint architecture have been presented at several events for inputs and validations. These are being incorporated in the blueprint architecture document due at M15. A blog post detailing the progresses is available on the AARC website: https://aarc-project.eu/aarc-draft-blueprint-architecture-available-for-comments/
- Policy work – Work has been undertaken to produce a Baseline Assurance Level and differentiated assurance profiles, to contribute to the definition of security incident framework [Sirtfi], to write the policy of RCauth.eu CA (since May 2016 IGTF accredited) used for token translation CILogon for Europe pilot[CILogon]. Work has been also undertaken to look at the sustainability aspects of this pilot.
- Pilots – The pilots carried out in AARC can be grouped as follows:
o Technical solutions to facilitate the adoption of federated access among the libraries;
o Token Translation Services (CILogon for Europe);
o Attribute managements
o Test various non-Web solutions (Moonshot, LDAP façade, others)
The results of the pilots will inform further work on both the architecture and the policies work.

[Federation 101] = https://aarc-project.eu/documents/training-modules/federations-101/
[SP training] = https://aarc-project.eu/documents/training-modules/training-for-service-provider-operators/
[Sirtfi] = https://aarc-project.eu/making-federated-security-a-priority-with-sirtfi/
[CILogon] = https://aarc-project.eu/digital-certificates-behind-the-scenes-the-aarc-cilogon-pilot/

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

AARC’s approach to build on existing AAIs to create the bridges among them has been well received. AARC’s work driven by the requirements of the research/e-infrastructures is proving successful. It is becoming evident to communities that developing their own AAI from scratch is not an option anymore. AARC is providing instruments to facilitate this as well as it is exploring models whereby existing collaborative platforms can be also used to support more than one community.

With its work, AARC is creating a layer to abstract from the complexity of AAIs, which will allow to offer platform as services. This layer can then be reused to support new research activities such as the European Open Science Cloud.

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