Service Provider (SP)

Service Provider typically house a number of services for the member of federation (or interested parties) to use. Typical SP would protect the resources or services and only allow authenticated or identified users to access them. In order for the user to access particular service, SP may require the user to identify him/her-self and furthermore may require the user to supply additional attributes.

In federation context, an SP may set an agreement with a number of IdPs, and as such only allow members of the trusted IdPs to have access to its services.

In short, an SP:

• Control access to service (who can access what) based on the attributes received from an IdP, i.e. they implement attribute-based access control.
• Know the IdP in the federation, so they only accept user assertions from trusted IdP.

-- BrucLiong - 16 Feb 2006