Securing remote services by integrating SecurID strong authentication technology in EFDA-Federation infrastructure

Remote participation facilities among fusion laboratories require access control solutions with two main objectives: to preserve the usability of the systems and to guaranty the required level of security for accessing to shared services. On one hand, this security solution has to be: single-sign-on, transparent for users, compatible with user mobility, and compatible with used client applications. On the other hand, it has to be compatible with shared services and resources among organisations, providing in each case the required access security level. EFDA-Federation 11,21 is a security infrastructure that integrates a set of fusion laboratories and enables to share resources and services fulfilling the requirements previously described. In EFDA community, JET and RFX have security access policies to some of their services that require strong authentication mechanisms. In both cases, strong authentication is based on RSA SecurID [3] tokens. This is a hardware device that is supplied to and generates a new password every minute. The job presents two main results. The first one is the integration of RSA SecurID into EFDA-Federation. Thanks to it, federated organisations are able to offer SecurID to their users as an alternative strong authentication mechanism, with the corresponding increase of security level. The second result is the development of a new access control mechanism based on port knocking techniques and its integration into EFDA-Federation. Additionally, a real application in RFX is presented and includes the integration of its SecurID infrastructure as federated authentication mechanism, and the application of the new access control mechanism to its MDSplus [4] server.