SWIFT (Secure Widespread Identities for Federated Telecommunications) is a European Union funded project of the 7th Framework Programme. The project leverages identity technology as a key to integrate service and transport infrastructures for the benefit of users and the providers. It focuses on extending identity functions and federation to the network while addressing usability and privacy concerns.
Partners
Nine Parters form the SWIFT Consortium
The SWIFT consortium is led by Fraunhofer SIT. Other members are Alcatel-Lucent, Deutsche Telekom, Dracotic, ITAveiro, NEC (Technical Lead), Portugal Telecom, University of Murcia and University of Stuttgart.
Duration
30 Month Project Duration
The project proposal was submitted to the EU Commission as part of Call 1 of the 7th Framework Programme. Negotiations were completed in September 2007, and the final Description of work was approved in November of the same year. The project started operation on 1st Janaury 2008 and has an overall 30 month time span. The planned completion date is 30th June 2010.
WP1
Work Methods, Dissemination and Exploitation
This WP is responsible for defining the work working methods and to manage dissemination. The task includes the definition work methods, dissemination towards the general public and towards journals and conferences, standardization co-ordination and exploitation within the participating companies and beyond.
WP2
Identity Framework
This WP drives the technical work by defining an overall architecture, the IdM platform to be adopted and dealing with the more general issues of federation, name resolution and data modelling. Based on initial scenarios and use-cases, it will identify the gaps in the SoA and address them. The WP will also handle name resolution, federation and defining the data models used in cross-layer information exchange.
WP3
Security Architecture
The WP develops the necessary security requirements and protocols. It will deal with the overall security analysis as well as specify and implement specific security primitives. Topics covered are the threat model, assurance metrics and the privacy and security implications of identity transfer. It will also instantiate some privacy and security enhancing techniques at different layers and crypto primitives.
WP4
Service and Network Architecture
This WP deals with the specific protocols which interact with the identity platform at service and network level. Whether existing protocols will be adapted to the identity architecture or new network and service level protocols need to be designed will depend on their suitability for the identity platform. The WP will deal with an network-related functions, such as AAA, billing and charging, mobility and roaming.
WP5
Scenarios and Evaluation
The WP will design scenarios based on use-cases which demonstrate the benefit of a cross-layer architecture. It will also design sub-demonstrators, taking the scenarios and use-cases as a basis, and instantiate these demonstrators using the software provided by the other work-packages.
SWIFT aims to primarily impact technology
research and related standardization in the manufacturing and telecom operator
domains. The social and legal domain will be addressed by liaisons and
co-operations. At the end of the project, we expect to have
the following available:
Identity as an Enabler for
Intent-based Communication: Identity Management can
become the catalyst to new, task driven, forms of communication where the user
puts forth intent and the system satisfies all dependencies and requirements.
SWIFT will develop the network and service tools to enable its users with
automatic service access, including network access.
Identity as the Convergence
Layer: While the approach to interoperability has
always been to develop bi-lateral interfaces between protocols, this new
paradigm makes use of a constant common factor in the architecture: the user.
The user data and sessions are used to bridge protocol functions and provide a
consistent, consolidated view of the user in the network.
Identity as the
Communication Endpoint: Historically, one thinks of
the endpoint of an active session in the Internet as a device or interface.
While this notion has served us well in the development of IP protocols, it is
also limitative in that there is no abstraction towards the user. This new
concept looks at how the concept of identity can be extended to define endpoints,
reachability, access control and support end to end privacy.
SWIFT intends to have made significant
technical progress to enable IdM to permeate the infrastructure, entering
application platforms, network appliances, development tools, and client
operating systems. In particular, we intend to have achieved the following
improvements:
For providers: Enable offering a flexible and faster, consistent and
comprehensive provision of services to customers. Allow foreign providers to
check with the home provider’s customer data base transparently to offer
potentially chargeable services to a visiting customer. The foreign and home
providers should potentially be as different as a Telco and Amazon. The SWIFT
framework should allow new and larger kinds of business, especially for
operators and service providers.
For users: Provide full ubiquity and mobility, and “liberate” users from
their devices, allowing uniform, ubiquitous access via several devices
simultaneously if needed. Apply privacy enhancing technologies across layers
based on user preferences, managing the linking of identifiers from strong to
weak to being unlinked according to users’ wishes.
SWIFT Project Overview (2095)
