Identity federation in Cybersecurity - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Understanding Identity Federation

📖 Scenario: You work in a company that uses multiple online services. Instead of creating separate usernames and passwords for each service, the company wants to use a system where employees can log in once and access all services securely.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple conceptual model of identity federation that shows how a user's identity from one system can be used to access multiple services without logging in repeatedly.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called identity_providers with exact entries for three providers and their URLs

Create a list called services with exact names of three services that use identity federation

Create a dictionary called user_tokens that maps each service to a token string representing user access

Add a final step that links the user tokens to the services showing the concept of single sign-on

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Identity federation is used in workplaces and online platforms to let users log in once and access many services securely without multiple passwords.

💼 Career

Understanding identity federation is important for cybersecurity professionals, system administrators, and developers working on secure authentication systems.

1

DATA SETUP: Define identity providers

Create a dictionary called identity_providers with these exact entries: 'Google': 'https://accounts.google.com', 'Facebook': 'https://www.facebook.com', and 'Microsoft': 'https://login.microsoftonline.com'.

Cybersecurity

# Create the identity_providers dictionary with exact entries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces to create a dictionary and separate each key-value pair with a comma.

2

CONFIGURATION: List services using identity federation

Create a list called services containing these exact strings: 'Email', 'Calendar', and 'Document Storage'.

Cybersecurity

identity_providers = {
    'Google': 'https://accounts.google.com',
    'Facebook': 'https://www.facebook.com',
    'Microsoft': 'https://login.microsoftonline.com'
}
# Create the services list with exact service names
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets to create a list and separate each service name with a comma.

3

CORE LOGIC: Map services to user tokens

Create a dictionary called user_tokens that maps each service in services to a token string: 'token_email' for 'Email', 'token_calendar' for 'Calendar', and 'token_docs' for 'Document Storage'.

Cybersecurity

identity_providers = {
    'Google': 'https://accounts.google.com',
    'Facebook': 'https://www.facebook.com',
    'Microsoft': 'https://login.microsoftonline.com'
}

services = ['Email', 'Calendar', 'Document Storage']
# Create the user_tokens dictionary mapping services to tokens
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a dictionary to link each service name to its token string exactly as shown.

4

COMPLETION: Link user tokens to services conceptually

Create a dictionary called federation_access that links each service in services to the corresponding token in user_tokens using a for loop with variable service.

Cybersecurity

identity_providers = {
    'Google': 'https://accounts.google.com',
    'Facebook': 'https://www.facebook.com',
    'Microsoft': 'https://login.microsoftonline.com'
}

services = ['Email', 'Calendar', 'Document Storage']

user_tokens = {
    'Email': 'token_email',
    'Calendar': 'token_calendar',
    'Document Storage': 'token_docs'
}
# Create federation_access dictionary linking services to tokens using a for loop
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use an empty dictionary and a for loop to assign tokens to each service key.