Ideas around "Levels of Assurance" have been receiving more and more
  attention, with the advance of federations and Authentication and
  Authorization infrastructures.

  "LoA is defined as the strength of authentication required for a service
  provider to be assured that a resource access is only granted to users whose
  identities have been verified. It reflects the degree of confidence in an
  authentication process used to establish the identity of an entity (an
  individual or a software component) to whom the credential was issued, and
  the degree of confidence that the entity using the credential is indeed the
  entity that the credential was issued to."

  Ning Zhang of Manchester University has taken the initiative to bring up
  the discussion on this activity in the OGF context.

  Examples of questions that this activity could address are:
  - What are the existing definitions of LoA suited to Grid or VO environment?
  - How to apply LoA to safeguard Grid services/resources?
  - Are some onerous registration requirements or special condition stipulations
    due to perceived inadequacies in the strength of authentication?
  - Are there any limitations in terms of user accessibility, scalability
    and interoperability?

  The activity can include discussion on how operational procedures affect LoA,
  how the various parameters and factors influence the overall LoA value in
  grid/VO environments, and come up with recommendations on how these factors
  can be taken into account. The purpose here is to consult, and to seek
  comments and feedbacks from, the communities concerned (including service
  providers, from e-Science, e-Business and e-Gov) on their views on the
  definition and applications of LoA in achieving fine-grained access control.

  Everyone interested in such an activity is extremely welcome to attend this
  activity BoF session.
  If there is sufficient interest within OGF, the BoF can also discuss how the
  activity is best embedded in the OGF organisation; it is not necessarily the
  aim of this BoF to result in a new research or working group.

  More information:
  Security Area Wiki:
    https://forge.gridforum.org/sf/wiki/do/viewPage/projects.sec/wiki/LoAInitiative
  Document "e-Infrastructure Security: Levels of Assurance"
    https://forge.gridforum.org/sf/sfmain/do/downloadAttachment/projects.sec/wiki/LoAInitiative?id=atch4300