OVER 20 UNIVERSITIES AND COMPANIES SUCCESSFULLY TEST
PRIVACY-PRESERVING FEDERATED WEB AUTHORIZATION SYSTEM
Demonstrations at Fall 2002 Internet2 Member Meeting
highlight pilot deployments of open, standards-based
system
Los Angeles, California--October 29, 2002--Early
deployment of Shibboleth, an emerging Web authorization
architecture and software, by over 20 institutions is
proving the possibilities of the open, standards-based
federated authorization system. Working Shibboleth
implementations are being demonstrated at the Fall 2002
Internet2 Member Meeting being held here today.
Shibboleth enables inter-institutional sharing of web
resources subject to access controls, as is often
required in classes offered jointly by multiple
universities. It permits off-campus students with
broadband connections to access licensed,
digital-library content transparently, and allows
scientists and faculty to share research web sites
securely with remote colleagues.
"After two months of using Shibboleth to manage web
course material at North Carolina State University, we
saw an 80- to 85-percent drop in our help desk calls,"
said John Hopkins, physics instructor at Pennsylvania
State University. "That's an incredible return, freeing
up instructors and staff for other responsibilities.”
The architecture emphasizes federated administration,
access control based on attributes rather than identity,
and active management of privacy to provide a scalable
and extensible framework for inter-institutional
authorization. Though similar in function to Microsoft's
Passport and the Liberty Alliance effort, Shibboleth has
had privacy considerations engineered in from the
beginning.
The Shibboleth software was developed under the auspices
of the National Science Foundation's Middleware
Initiative (NMI). The software is expected to ship in
early December 2002. The National Science Digital
Library, a major NSF educational initiative, will use
Shibboleth in its infrastructure for accessing
customized or restricted content and services.
Institutions currently involved in the pilot test
program include: Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia
University, Dartmouth College, Georgetown University,
the London School of Economics, New York University,
Ohio State University, Penn State, the University of
Colorado, the University of Michigan, the University of
Washington, the University of Wisconsin - Madison, the
University of California Office of the President, EBSCO,
Elsevier, OCLC, SFX, WebAssign, and WebCT.
Shibboleth is a project of Internet2 to develop
architectures, policy structures, practical
technologies, and open source implementations. For more
information about the Internet2 Middleware Initiative
and Shibboleth, see:
http://middleware.internet2.edu/shibboleth/
About Internet2(R)
Led by over 200 U.S. universities, working with industry
and government, Internet2 is developing and deploying
advanced network applications and technologies for
research and higher education, accelerating the creation
of tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 recreates the
partnerships among academia, industry, and government
that helped foster today's Internet in its infancy. For
more information about Internet2, see:
http://www.internet2.edu/
Contact:
Greg Wood, Internet2
[log in to unmask]
703-625-3917
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