CILogon: A federated X.509 certification authority for cyberinfrastructure logon

CILogon provides a federated X.509 certification authority for secure access to cyberinfrastructure such as the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE). CILogon relies on federated authentication (SAML and OpenID) for determining user identities when issuing certificates. Federated authentication enables users to obtain certificates using existing identities (university, Google, etc.). Federated authentication also enables CILogon to serve a national-scale user community without requiring a large network of registration authorities performing manual user identification. CILogon supports multiple levels of assurance and custom interfaces for specific user communities. In this article we introduce the CILogon service and describe experiences and lessons learned from the first three years of operation.