A Model for Authentication Credentials Translation in Service Oriented Architecture

Due to the increasing number of service providers, the grouping of these providers following the federation concept and the use of the Single Sign On (SSO) concept are helping users to gain a transparent access to resources, without worrying about their locations. However, current industry and academic production only provide SSO in cases with homogeneous underlying security technology. This paper deals with interoperability between heterogeneous security technologies. The proposed model is based on the Credential Translation Service that allows SSO authentication even heterogeneous security technologies are considered. Therefore, the proposed model provides authentication credentials translation and attribute transposition and, as a consequence, provides authorization involving different kinds of credentials and permissions in the federation environment. By making use of Web Services, this study is strongly based on concepts introduced in the SAML, WS-Trust and WS-Federation specifications.