News and information about InCommon Academy offerings

[Dean Woodbeck <>]

The University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) has become the third 
higher-education organization to become certified for the Bronze Identity 
Assurance Profile under the InCommon Assurance Program. 

UMBC is also the second to use the representation of conformance method to 
qualify for Bronze certification. Using this simplified approach for Bronze 
requires no audit; the identity provider attests to compliance by signing the 
assurance addendum to the InCommon participation agreement. 

“UMBC believes Identity management is absolutely essential to campus cyber 
security, and Bronze and Silver represent consensus best practice in identity 
management,” said Jack Suess, vice president of information technology and 
CIO at UMBC. “It is in our interest to utilize these best practices in 
designing and implementing our identity management processes.”

InCommon developed the assurance program as part of its mission to provide 
secure and privacy-preserving trust services for its participants. Enabling 
higher-value, higher-risk services requires increased trust by the 
organizations that run the identity and cloud services. 

InCommon currently has two US-Government approved assurance profiles — Bronze 
and Silver. Bronze is comparable to the National Institute of Standards and 
Technology (NIST) Assurance 1 level, which has credential security adequate 
for basic Internet interactions. Silver, comparable to NIST’s level of 
Assurance 2, requires proof of identity and has security appropriate for 
higher-risk transactions. 

More information about the assurance program is at assurance.incommon.org.