Application Bridging for Federated Access Beyond Web (ABFAB) Use Cases
RFC 7832

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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                     R. Smith, Ed.
Request for Comments: 7832                                          Jisc
Category: Informational                                         May 2016
ISSN: 2070-1721

 Application Bridging for Federated Access Beyond Web (ABFAB) Use Cases

Abstract

   Federated identity is typically associated with web-based services at
   present, but there is growing interest in its application in non-web-
   based contexts.  The goal of this memo is to document a selection of
   the wide variety of these contexts whose user experience could be
   improved through the use of technologies based on the Application
   Bridging for Federated Access Beyond web (ABFAB) architecture and
   specifications.

Status of This Memo

   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
   published for informational purposes.

   This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
   received public review and has been approved for publication by the
   Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Not all documents
   approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
   Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7832.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Smith                         Informational                     [Page 1]
RFC 7832                     ABFAB Use Cases                    May 2016

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction ....................................................2
   2. Context of Use Cases ............................................3
   3. Use Cases .......................................................3
      3.1. Cloud Services .............................................3
           3.1.1. Cloud-Based Application Services ....................4
           3.1.2. Cloud-Based Infrastructure Services .................5
      3.2. High-Performance Computing .................................6
      3.3. Grid Infrastructure ........................................6
      3.4. Databases and Directories ..................................7
      3.5. Media Streaming ............................................8
      3.6. Printing ...................................................9
      3.7. Accessing Applications from Devices on a Telecoms
           Infrastructure .............................................9
      3.8. Enhanced Security Services for S/MIME .....................10
      3.9. Smart Objects .............................................11
   4. Security Considerations ........................................11
   5. References .....................................................12
      5.1. Normative References ......................................12
      5.2. Informative References ....................................12
   Acknowledgments ...................................................13
   Contributors ......................................................13
   Author's Address ..................................................13

1.  Introduction

   Federated identity facilitates the controlled sharing of information
   about people (a.k.a. "principals"), commonly across organizational
   boundaries.  This avoids redundant registration of principals who
   operate in and across multiple domains, both reducing the
   administrative overhead for the organizations involved and improving
   the usability of systems for the principal.  Simultaneously, it can
   also help address privacy-related concerns, along with the regulatory
   and statutory requirements of some jurisdictions.

   The information that is passed between organizations may include
   authentication state and identity information that can be used for
   many purposes, including making access management decisions.  A
   number of mechanisms support the transmission of this information for
   web-based scenarios in particular (e.g., the Security Assertion
   Markup Language (SAML) [OASIS.saml-profiles-2.0-os]), but there is
   significant interest in the more general application of federated
   identity to include non-web use cases.  This document enumerates some