Administration Guide › Using SPS with Federation Security Services › Solutions for SPS Use Cases › Solution 4: SSO in an Extended Network

Solution 4: SSO in an Extended Network

Solution 4 illustrates how SiteMinder Federation Security Services can be deployed at smcompany.com, ahealthco.com, and discounts.com to solve Use Case 4: Extended Networks.

The following illustration shows an extended network. SAML 1.x is the protocol being used.

SiteMinder is deployed at smcompany.com and ahealthco.com. At smcompany.com, the SPS with the Web Agent Option Pack can be installed across two machines or the SPS federation gateway can be installed on one machine. The Policy Server with the Policy Server Option Pack is installed on another machine. At ahealthco.com, the SPS with the Web Agent Option Pack can be installed across two machines and the Policy Server with the Policy Server Option Pack is installed on another machine. At discounts.com, the SAML Affiliate Agent is installed.

The FWS application at the producing side provides the service that retrieves assertions. The FWS application at the consuming side provides the service that consumes assertions.

In Solution 4:

• smcompany.com acts as a producer for User1 and a consumer for User2
• ahealthco.com acts as a consumer for User1 and a producer for User2 and a producer for User3
• discounts.com acts as a consumer for User1, User2, and User3

The administrator for smcompany.com has configured two entities in an affiliate domain, which represents ahealthco.com and discounts.com. These sites are configured in a similar manner as in Examples 1 and 3 described previously, but the configurations have been extended as follows:

• At smcompany.com, the administrator has configured a SAML authentication scheme (artifact or POST). For User2, the authentication scheme enables smcompany.com to act as a consumer for ahealthco.com.
• At ahealthco.com:
  • The administrator has configured an affiliate object that represents smcompany.com so an assertion is produced for User2. This makes single sign-on to smcompany.com possible.
  • The administrator has configured an affiliate object that represents discounts.com so an assertion is produced for User2 and User3. This makes single sign-on to discounts.com possible.
• At discounts.com, the administrator has configured the SAML Affiliate Agent to act as a consumer for smcompany.com, as in Example 3 (an arrow connecting the two sites is not shown in the illustration). The administrator at discounts.com has also added configuration information about ahealthco.com so that the SAML Affiliate Agent can consume assertions from ahealthco.com for User2 and User3.