When users access online services, they want to be confident that their data and services are secure and their privacy is protected. Institutions and Service Providers that offer online services also need to verify a user's identity to make sure only the right users are accessing the right information. These are distinct That is why identity assurance is needed.
In general there are three types of authentication factors:
- Something the user knows (password or PIN)
- Something the user has (mobile phone or token)
- Something the user is (fingerprint or other bio-metric data)
Strong authentication refers to the use of more than one of these factors. Generally this results in a higher level of assurance (LoA) about the user.
| Level of assurance | Authentication Assurance | Identity assurance | Characteristics |
|---|---|---|---|
| LoA 1 | Username/password | No extra validation of the user's identity | For access to basic resources with little or no risk |
| LoA 1.5 | Username/password + second factor | No extra validation of the user's identity | Protects the user and resources from compromised passwords |
| LoA 2 | Username/password + tiqr, SMS or AzureMFA | The identity of the user is validated | For high level of confidence in the asserted identity. Often used for access to high risk resources |
| LoA 3 | Username/password + YubiKey or FIDO2 | The identity of the user is validated | Same as LoA2, but with more secure authentication methods. |
A service or institution needs to choose which level of assurance is appropriate for protection. There are several ways a LoA can be requested for a specific service or part of a service.
Second Factor Only (SFO) authentication
With Second Factor Only (SFO) Authentication "Level" is used to indicate the authentication strength: LoA does not apply. There are three levels:
- Level 1.5: any SURFsecureID second factor, no extra validation of the user's identity
- Level 2: SMS, Tiqr or Azure MFA authentication AND the identity of the user is validated
- Level 3: YubiKey or FIDO2 token authentication AND the identity of the user is validated
Assurance level explained
There are several international standards for identity assurance, like NIST (US), eIDAS (Europe, previously STORK) and ISO29115. SURFsecureID is based on ISO29115. The four levels of identity assurance commonly used are:
| LoA 1 | Little or no confidence in the asserted identity |
| LoA 2 | Some confidence in the asserted identity |
| LoA 3 | High confidence in the asserted identity |
| LoA 4 | Very high confidence in the asserted identity |
The different specifications elaborate on the meaning of these labels by specifying requirements for:
- registration
- authentication token management
- online authentication
The resulting assurance level depends on the combination of these aspects. The aspect with the lowest score determines the overall assurance level (a chain is only as strong as its weakest link).
Level of assurance requirements: risk based
The required level of assurance can be estimated on:
- the importance of the data and
- the potential damages if these data were to be obtained or modified by unauthorized users
These risks must be assessed to be able to decide what level of assurance is needed for your service (see also SURFnet guidelines).
Level of assurance vs robustness of infrastructure
The LoAs described by NIST and STORK primarily focus on the robustness of the authentication. The robustness of the technical infrastructure is mostly beyond their scope.
It is assumed that proper measures are taken to prevent authentication protocol threats such as eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle, replaying, and hijacking. Attacks are not limited to the authentication protocol itself. Other attacks include the use of malicious code to compromise authentication tokens, insider threats to compromise authentication tokens, social engineering to get a subscriber to reveal his password to the attacker, “shoulder-surfing”, fooling claimants into using an insecure protocol, when they think that they are using a secure protocol, or intentionally denying ever having registered by subscribers who deliberately compromise their tokens.
Other types of threats are (SAML) assertion related such as modification, disclosure, repudiation, reuse or redirect. Countermeasures should be taken to prevent these attacks as well. The most important ones are the use of digital signatures to sign assertions and the use of SSL/TLS to secure the communication channel.
Both control measures are required to fulfill the requirements for LoA2 and LoA3 and are already in place in SURFsecureID.
Level of assurance vs attributes
SURFsecureID solely focuses on authentication LoA. No LoA is assigned to the attributes of the user's identity.
Several attributes provided by the IdP (e.g. first and last name, e-mail address) will be validated during registration and identification. In theory a LoA could be assigned to these attributes, which in attribute-based access control scenario’s could make authorization more reliable. There are however some arguments against doing this:
- Mixing attributes with different LoA’s is complex
- There is no suitable way to express differing LoA’s for attributes in SAML assertions
- The registration process will be more complex
Because of these arguments SURFsecureID solely focuses on authentication LoA.