Agent Guides › SAML Affiliate Agent Guide › SAML Affiliate Agent Overview › Introducing the SAML Affiliate Agent

Introducing the SAML Affiliate Agent

The SAML Affiliate Agent is part of SiteMinder’s Federation Security Services, which enables businesses with partner relationships to share security and customer profile information. It is a stand-alone component that provides single sign-on and session management capabilities to a consumer site that does not use the SiteMinder Policy Server and SiteMinder Web Agent.

The SAML Affiliate Agent supports only the SAML 1.0 specification.

Note: Federation Security Services and the SAML Affiliate Agent are separately-licensed from SiteMinder.

SAML is the Security Assertion Markup Language, developed by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). SAML defines an XML framework for exchanging authentication and authorization information.

When business partners share security and user profile information, they can provide their customers with seamless access to services across a federated network. For example, if a customer visits a producer then proceeds to a partner site within the federated network, the partner might present the user with a customized welcome page that includes their name and customer information. The partner gets this information from the producer.

The following illustration shows the partner relationship:

At the producer site, there is a full SiteMinder installation. At the consumer site there is only a SAML Affiliate Agent; there is no Policy Server or Web Agent. The SAML Affiliate Agent provides user information to a Web server for use with its Web applications, and it protects only those resources specified in its configuration file. The applications can use the provided information to personalize Web content for each user.

The SAML Affiliate Agent:

• Provides a seamless connection from the producer to the consumer without requiring a user to re-identify or provide additional information about themselves.
• Extracts user information from the producer. This information could include a user’s buying preferences, the identity of the producer, or demographic information that is useful for tracking customers. This information can then be set as cookies or header variables for the Web server at the consumer.
• Can determine that the user has been registered at the producer, and optionally, that the user has an active SiteMinder session.
• Identifies the user without requiring a full SiteMinder installation at the consumer site.
• Allows Web applications to personalize Web content based on the information received from the producer.
• Can share a session with the producer to provide single sign-on and single sign-off.
• Can notify the producer when users visit specific resources at the consumer.