Learn About Security: Open Authorization in Federated Applications using IBM Security Tools

IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager (TFIM) simplifies application integration by providing single sign on between disparate web applications, so the users do not have to share their passwords or re-enter them. TFIM uses various protocols to achieve federation, which include SAML, WS-Federation, and OpenID. Our Security LoB has been invited by IBM to participate in a beta program to implement the popular authorization protocol, OAuth. OAuth, which stands for Open Authorization, is a protocol that allows users to approve applications to act on their behalf. OAuth makes it possible to exchange critical information across distinct organizations based upon a service level agreement that states one application as an OAuth client and the other as an OAuth provider. One major benefit of the OAuth protocol is its emphasis on authorization, when compared to its alternatives. This is giving rise to a hybrid model in which our customers can combine protocols like SAML or OpenID for authentication and OAuth for authorization. OAuth, besides making the token exchange mechanism transparent to the user, provides mechanisms to define the scope which the Client could access regarding the user’s data on the Provider.

Here is a fictitious example. Imagine PFAP as a financial application dashboard developed by Prolifics that provides a user with a consolidated view of his account balances across multiple banks. First, PFAP would have to be in an agreement as an OAuth client across all of the banks, from which account information would be obtained on behalf of the user. Once an agreement is set up with each Provider, PFAP would be registered as an OAuth client to those particular banks (Providers) and so would be provided with a client ID and a shared secret for each one. This information (Client ID, Shared Secret) would help the Provider determine, if the application (Client) requesting data on behalf of user, is one of its trusted OAuth clients. Assuming an agreement between Prolifics and a leading financial firm, PFAP is one of the OAuth clients that has access to the Firm's customer data, upon approval. The first time a user logs into the PFAP application, he will be asked to add his account number to PFAP. Once the user selects “Add Account” button, the user would be redirected to the Firm's website, where he would be asked to put in his credentials. At this step a token would be requested by PFAP from the Firm in the background, which gets authorized upon user logging into the Firm's website. This action grants access to PFAP to act on the user’s behalf.

From the user’s perspective, once logged in the Firm would display a “Consent to Authorize” page where the user would needs to permit access to PFAP to act on his behalf and retrieve information within a certain scope, which in this case would be user’s account balance. Once the user agrees to permit PFAP to act on his behalf and retrieve balance information, a verifier code is sent to PFAP in the background. PFAP would then request an access token from the Firm's application sending the verifier code, Client ID, Shared Secret and few other parameters to request an Access token. The Firm would verify the Client ID and Shared Secret to determine if PFAP is one of its OAuth clients and then would verify the Verifier Code to generate an Access token. Once PFAP receives the Access token, it enables PFAP to get the user’s data on his behalf though within a permitted scope, which in this case would be the account balance. So next time the user logs in, since PFAP would already have an Access token, the user would be able to see his balance information without having to login to the Firm's website. Now, implementation of hybrid models is being thought upon, where a combination of OAuth with protocols like SAML or OpenID would help us achieve SSO at the same time. For instance, once logged into PFAP, an implementation of hybrid model would enable the user to perform other operations in the Firm's website like balance transfers, by launching a new link to the Firm without the need to login again (SSO).

BPM Best Practices for the Financial Industry

In our current economic environment, the financial industry is challenged today by two very significant needs to improve efficiency and enhance service. I spoke about these business needs last year at an event hosted by Prolifics and IBM, and they couldn’t be more significant today. To satisfy these requirements, organizations are tasked with driving down costs by consolidating duplicated and siloed systems into well-defined, reusable services and managing customer service levels with greater flexibility.

This industry has a collection of 'habits,' or best practices, that have a powerful effect on business performance in these critical areas. Over time, we have captured the best practices that have proven to be successful with process management programs within the financial industry. At this seminar, we reviewed 11 specific practices that help financial services organizations experience success with projects/delivery, team competency and leveraging Business Process Management (BPM) across the enterprise.

I’d like to share some of these ‘habits’ with you now:

Make BPM about Productivity and Visibility

• Metrics, KPIs and SLAs should be part of the DEFINE phase
• Don’t scope out metrics
• Remember: visibility is critical to improvement

Never “One and Done”

• Iterative Approach: continuous process improvement
• Additional phases or versions will always happen: The value in BPM is that you can get your first version out there quickly, but the real opportunity here is really in version 2, 3 and 4 where you are bringing entirely new levels of capability and sophistication of efficiency of effectiveness to your organization

Don’t Skip Process Analysis

• Processes are done by many different parties! Process analysis helps you understand: What does the end-to-end look like? What data is needed at different points? What is the velocity that we need in this process? How quickly do we need turnaround time?
• Process analysis sets apart traditional applications development from building process applications

  
Build a Complete Team

• Have the right mix of resources on the team with a broad set of skill sets
• Java (.NET) developers aren’t all you need

Establish the Owners

• A requirement for succeeding with BPM is that processes must be business-owned. You need people from the business to engage and determine what the process priorities are.
• They key benefit to this iterative approach is that you can make tradeoffs and changes to adapt to changing business conditions and requirements. A level of business engagement will ensure that the right decisions are being made.

In addition, financial institutions face a highly demanding environment requiring exceeding agility. The seminar focused on how customers can reap the benefits of the business rule approach to operational decision making in the areas of payments, credit and lending, risk management and customer care for financial institutions. With business rules, key decisions in your financial processes can be changed in minutes to days rather than months - bringing new levels of efficiency to day-to-day operations.

To read more about these 11 Habits for highly successful BPM programs and the benefits of a business rules management system, please take a look at this presentation. For any questions about these topics or Prolifics’ solutions for the financial industry, please email solutions@prolifics.com.

Don Rivera is a Client Executive with Prolifics managing the NY & NJ Metro territory. Don is a certified IBM WebSphere Solution Sales Professional working with SMB and Enterprise accounts to determine how to leverage IBM software technology to meet their critical business objectives. He brings over 16 years of experience working in the information technology industry in various system engineering, sales and business development roles with companies such as Computer Sciences Corporation, Level 3 Communications and BBN Technologies.