Matching federation identities, the eduGAIN and STORK approach

Several identity federations with different authentication mechanisms exist in the area of governments and educational institutions. STORK from the European administration side and eduGAIN from research and educational institutions side are the main exponents in their areas. Both federations are investing on harmonizing and integrating their federations with other Authentications and Authorization Infrastructures (AAI) to improve and gain users and services. This paper analyses each federation and different integration scenarios proposing an interfederation solution that interconnects both federations through ad-hoc interoperability mechanisms, focusing on identity matching. In addition, an international testbed has been deployed to probe the viability and quality of the solution, with the focus on the user experience. The proposed integration allows an explosion of users and services both federations, allowing also the conversion of some face to face procedures to online transactions thanks to the use of strong authentication mechanisms.