| In This Issue | |
- Global Interfederation Implemented
- Federated Identity and K-14: IAM Online March 9
- Shibboleth IdP Version 2 End of Life and Shib Workshops
- Federation Use Hits Milestone
- Research and Scholarship Category Support
- Per-Entity Testbed Continues
- New InCommon Steering Members
- New Draft eduPerson Specification Includes ORCID Attribute
- New InCommon Technical Advisory Committee Members
- New InCommon Participants
- New InCommon Certificate Service Subscribers
- Duo Security Subscribers
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Global Interfederation Implemented | |
The InCommon community successfully integrated with the global eduGAIN service. The community commitment was substantial, with several working groups considering and resolving both technical and policy considerations over the last three years. As a result, faculty, researchers, staff, and students at InCommon campuses have seamless access to international collaboration tools and other services made available by 40 national federations (and vice versa). | |
Federated Identity and K-14: IAM Online March 9 |
Join us for the next IAM Online webinar to learn about the working groups and pilots that have explored the possibility of extending the benefits of federated identity management to K-12 communities and community colleges. Learn about the next steps that InCommon and North Carolina’s MCNC plan to take. The webinar is Wednesday, March 9, at 2 pm ET. A recent article in Campus Technology covered the pilot work. |
Shibboleth IdP Version 2 End of Life and Shib Workshops |
The Shibboleth Consortium announced last year that version 2 of the Identity Provider software would go end-of-life on July 31, 2016. All Shibboleth deployments are encouraged to move to version 3 of the Identity Provider. Curious who has moved to Shib IdPv3? We have a list! To help organizations move to IdPv3, InCommon is holding three Shibboleth Installation Workshops prior to the end-of-life date: May 19-20 in Chicago, June 2-3 in Albuquerque, and June 23-24 in Rochester, New York. For details, see www.incommon.org/shibtraining |
Federation Use Hits Milestone |
The number of organizations using the InCommon Federation (that is, those that publish metadata) reached 600 in late February. Other fun facts include 411 organizations have at least one Identity Provider and 318 have at least one Service Provider. There are 129 organizations that have both at least one Identity Provider and one Service Provider. See the details at https://incommon.org/federation/info/all-orgs.html |
Research and Scholarship Category Support |
During February, nine Identity Providers migrated to support for the global Research & Scholarship Category (R&S), bringing the total to 30 IdPs that release a small set of attributes (basically directory information) to all services in the category. The category approach allows all services added to the category to automatically receive these attributes. This is of substantial help in providing hassle-free access to international collaboration tools for faculty, scientists, and researchers. Another 91 IdPs support R&S, but only for services registered by InCommon (not all global services) For more information on the category approach, see the R&S page on the wiki. |
Per-Entity Testbed Continues |
Since 2014, InCommon has operated a Per-Entity Metadata Testbed, which demonstrates an alternative method of metadata distribution. Originally scheduled to end on March 1, the service has been extended to September 1, 2016. InCommon currently operates this testbed to advance capability and knowledge with respect to per-entity metadata. More information is at https://spaces.internet2.edu/x/3w7kAg |
New InCommon Steering Members |
Last month, InCommon welcomed new members to both the InCommon Steering Committee: Ted Hanss (University of Michigan), Brett Coryell (Northern Illinois University), and Celeste Schwartz (Montgomery County Community College). Completing their service on the Steering are Mark Crase (Cal. State University), John O’Keefe (Lafayette College). Chris Holmes (Baylor University) also complete his term as a Steering member, but has agreed to remain as the policy and legal advisor. See incommon.org/about.html |
New Draft eduPerson Specification Includes
ORCID Attribute |
Support for ORCID identifiers is part of the proposed new version of the eduPerson Specification. ORCID aims to solve the name ambiguity problem in research and scholarly communications by creating a central registry of unique identifiers for individual researchers and an open and transparent linking mechanism between ORCID and other current researcher ID schemes. ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-driven effort. |
InCommon Technical Advisory Committee Welcomes New Members |
Six community members have joined the InCommon Technical Advisory Committee (TAC): Janemarie Duh (Lafayette College), Walter Hoehn (University of Memphis), Kim Milford (REN-ISAC), Tom Mitchell (GENI Project), Mark Scheible (MCNC), and Albert Wu (UCLA). Those completing service to the TAC include Jim Basney (National Center for Supercomputing Applications), Paul Caskey and Nick Roy (both now Internet2 staff members), Mike LaHaye (Internet2), and also Steve Olshansky, Ian Young, and David Walker (who remain as subject-matter experts). |
New InCommon Participants |
As of March 8, InCommon has 839 participants taking advantage of one or more InCommon Services. There are now 563 higher education, 30 research organization, and 246 sponsored partner participants. InCommon welcomes these new participating organizations: Higher Ed
Florida Gulf Coast University
Lake Tahoe Community College
Lamar State College - Port Arthur
Lamar University
Liberty University
North Carolina Central University
Ozarks Technical Community College
Southern Maine Community College
Teachers College - Columbia University
Texas Christian University
Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center
University of Tampa
Wayne State University Sponsored Partners
Adirondack Solutions
Medicat, LLC
Panopto
VisualZen |
New InCommon Certificate Service Subscribers |
As of March 8, 2016, 357 organizations subscribe to the InCommon Certificate Service, which provides unlimited certificates for all domains owned by a university at one annual fee. New subscribers during February 2016 include: University at Buffalo - SUNY
University of Nevada-Las Vegas
Carnegie Mellon University
Westminster College - Salt Lake City
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Duo Security Subscribers
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As of March 8, 2016, 89 organizations subscribe to the Duo Security second factor authentication service offered through InCommon. |
InCommon Update
