Identity Future

InCommon, an identity management federation serving US higher education, announced that it is substantially expanding its community to include an additional ten universities, four service providers, and a private identity provider.

“The research and education community, which today depends upon online resources through its partnerships with content and service providers, has been at the forefront of deploying the federated identity management approach,” said Tracy Mitrano, director of Information Technology Policy, Cornell University and chair of the InCommon Steering Committee.

InCommon provides the framework for the partners and sponsors to share protected online information and resources. The resource sharing needs to be done in a highly secure manner while keeping the privacy of those who access this material just as safe. InCommon which uses Shibboleth Technology helps to ease the troubles of the partners by providing single sign-on capabilities to access multiple resources.

“To meet the increasing campus demand for using external applications and online resources, we developed and implemented solutions that efficiently use our existing information infrastructures securely and safely in such a way that we maintain control over the release of personal information for people at Penn State,” said Kevin Morooney, vice provost of Penn State University. “InCommon is a vitally important part of this infrastructure and helps put us in a position to provide a richer, easier to use, safer online experience for Penn State students, faculty, and staff.”

higher education, incommon, indentity management, universities