The AAF adheres to the following national and international standards and guidelines.  The AAF participates in the development and on-going maintenance of many of these standards.


Many of these standards and guidelines have been developed by and are maintained by the Research and Education FEDerations group (REFEDS).


Standard / GuidelineOverviewVersion
REFEDS Identity Federation Baseline Expectations
Defines a common set of expectations of all participant organisations to establish a baseline of trust in identity federations.

v1.0

REFEDS Assurance Framework

In identity federations, Relying Parties (RPs) grant access to services by allowing users to use their own institutional credentials by logging in to their respective Identity Providers (IdPs), which rely on their institution’s underlying Credential Service Providers (CSPs). To manage risks related to federated access to their services, some RPs in research and education federations must decide how much confidence they need in the assertions made by the IdPs. This document specifies a framework for articulating such assurances and their expression by the CSP to the RP using common identity federation protocols.


v2.0