UK Access Management Federation

Audience Likely to be of interest to Directors of IT, IS, MIS, converged Library and Information Services, Chief Information Officers, those with responsibility for institutional Information Strategies

Session Chair John Robinson Services Operations Director, JISC

Presenters

  • Henry Hughes, Middleware Group Manager, UKERNA
  • Mark Williams, Access Management Outreach Coordinator, JISC
  • Masha Garibyan, PERSEUS project, LSE

Objectives of the session

JISC has initiated a Transition programme to move from Athens as its preferred Access Management solution to the UK Access Management Federation which implements federated access management across the entire UK education sector based on the Internet2 implementation of SAML (Secure Assertion Markup Language) known as Shibboleth(R).  The Federation will be operated by UKERNA on behalf of JISC and Becta.  During 2006-8 JISC will fund the Federation alongside its Athens service.  From August 2008 Athens will become an outsourced identity provider within the Federation, available to members of the community on a subscription basis and JISC. with Becta, will fund the operation of the UK Access Management Federation under and SLA with UKERNA.

This session will outline the reasoning behind JISC's decision, the development work which has brought the new technology to the point where it is ready for service and the range of measures and activities which the JISC is undertaking to enable sites to become Identity Providers within the Federation and support them thereafter. Particular attention will be paid to the technological and business drivers for the transition and the new functionalities which SAML and federated access management enable.

Format of the session

  • Introduction by John Robinson
  • Preview of the JISC introduction to Federated Access Management Animation
  • Presentation outlining the UK Access Management Federation by Henry Hughes
  • Panel discussion based on community questions concerned with joining the UK Federation

Issues to be covered will include:

  • proof of concept through the early-adopter and technology projects
  • case studies showing the benefits of federated access management
  • work being done to research and identify best practice in Enterprise Directory Services (possibly a joint project with UCISA)
  • place of Athens in the Federation
  • extension of the Federation across the entire UK Education sector

Attendees are invited to email any questions or issues that they would like to see discussed in this session to: jisc-access-management@jiscmail.ac.uk

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