Hello, I am currently working on a Single Sign On project. The project looks to use a single portal as access to several (15) services offered by a financial service body. The users to access this service via the single portal comprise of both internal and external users. This means there is need to define the users groups and also the security access level for the users and the services.

Question:

1.       How do you go about conducting requirements for this project? What areas to look into? E.g Portal component, Registration component, sign On component , Authentication and Authorisation component and Admin portal Component

2.       Can anyone advise on a generic infrastructure design / model which can be used / deployed in a complex organisation? And which will show how the solution works / will work and how data is requested and exchanges. 

3.       Any sample requirement document for SSO as a guide to what to look for, what component to research and gather information.

4.       How to handle Authentication and Authorisation

5.       How to go about defining the security access levels for the services and also for the user groups

6.       What technical challenges should I be looking out for

7.       Any advice / recommendations 

Thanks and look forward to your contributions.

I think you have asked a pretty tough question for anyone who hasn't been involved in a Single Sign On project.  I would caution about mixing your business and technical requirements.

Start with the business requirements.  Think about the following.

• Registration
• Role assignment
• Registration/Role Approval
• System Access based on Role
• Single Sign On/Login

Then you have the Architecture/Technical Requirements to consider.  Most of these will need to be determined by an Architect or whomever is managing the development side.  They will start to jump the chasm between requirements and solution design. These will include things like:

• Authentication
• Authorization
• Security and Encryption

There are probably some best practices available but finding them could be difficult. Many companies have implemented a Single Sign On solution, so I wouldn't reinvent the wheel.

Thanks Chris Adams for your comment. I have been working on the project and as a team we came up with the key areas to capture requirements via user stories:

. Registration

. Log In & Authentication

. Identity

. Self-Service & Web Portal

. Assisted Digital & Trusted Helpers

For each one of the above we tried to capture the As Is situation and he To Be situation (user stories forming the requirements for the new solution). As you rightly said the technical architect will then be responsible for defining the solution options. We do not intend to build from scratch but use existing off the shelf solutions via a vendor. 

The approach is to capture common needs across the impacted business areas (at the minimum) level then work through each impacted business area one after the other literately and incrementally.

Any thoughts regarding the approach?

Kind regards