Human Genomes Platform Project: Federated Identity and Access Management Candidate Solutions Evaluation Report

The Human Genomes Platform Project (hereafter ‘HGPP’ or ‘the project’) is a collaborative research project aiming to enhance secure and responsible sharing of human genomic data for research purposes. National and international connectivity is important to maximise the utility of these sensitive and valuable assets. The project partners represent many of the largest human genome sequencing and analysis organisations in Australia.

Federated Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a collection of standards, policies, and technologies that enable a platform to determine whether to permit access to a user. Federated IAM employs technologies, such as cryptography, and coordinated policies that outline common expectations between ecosystem participants. In a federated environment like the Australian and global genomics communities, IAM is the glue that enables loosely coupled systems to establish strong trust relationships for the purposes of data sharing.

IAM is a core component of the Human Genomes Platform Project (HGPP), designed to explore and implement systems that can be used to confirm that someone being granted access is in fact who they say they are and that their professional identity and role is considered. Federated IAM solutions were piloted across multiple repositories during the project.

Specifically, the federated IAM sub-project aimed to explore and pilot systems that organisations can deploy to leverage:

• Federated authentication infrastructure to streamline access to genomic data and analysis tools; and

• Attributes about the user and their home organisation identity to increase the level of confidence, to the point where service providers can make reliable authorisation decisions. 

Beginning with a knowledge discovery phase, the federated IAM sub-project team established the formal requirements of the system through community consultation, identified several candidate solutions, and assessed those solutions against selection criteria. CILogon emerged as the leading candidate and was selected for the subsequent pilot implementation phase. In this report, we summarise our approach to testing the deployment of CILogon and its integration with the Beacon network explored in the virtual cohorts sub-project.