News for and about the Internet2 community

["Lauren Rotman" <>]

First Nationwide U.S. Higher Education Identity Management Federation
Expands
InCommon Adds New Service Providers and Identity Providers

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - October 10, 2006 - InCommon(R), the first nationwide U.S.
identity management federation for higher education, today announced that
its community has significantly expanded: ten additional universities, four
service providers, and for the first time a private identity provider have
joined the other leading organizations on its growing participant roster.  

"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's
growth signals the continuing adoption of this approach by more leading
universities and forward-thinking service providers who see immediate value
in participating in a scalable and secure trust community."

Among the new participants are four diverse service providers: Turnitin,
Symplicity, Houston Academy of Medicine - Texas Medical Center Library, and
Cdigix, Inc. InCommon participants can partner with: Turnitin to access its
online plagiarism prevention service; Symplicity to leverage its career
management and recruiting tools; Houston Academy of Medicine - Texas Medical
Center Library for its wide range of online medical content; as well as
Cdigix for its comprehensive portfolio of legally available digital
entertainment and educational content. 

Cdigix's recently-announced partnership with the University of Washington
leverages InCommon to offer students and faculty digital media content.
Using InCommon, the university and Cdigix ensure appropriate access by
students to the resources without unnecessarily revealing their personal
information. University of Maryland Baltimore County and Penn State
University have partnered with Symplicity to help students manage, identify
and apply for internships and post-academic careers through InCommon. And,
Penn State uses Turnitin plagiarism protection services via InCommon to
offer its professors the ability to better monitor for plagiarism and to
provide students with tools to ensure proper attribution methods in their
academic works.

"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."

InCommon provides a framework for its participating universities and
sponsored partners to share protected online information and Web resources
in a highly secure environment while optionally protecting the privacy of
individual users who require access to these critical online materials.
InCommon, which leverages Shibboleth middleware technology, eases the
administrative and security burdens of online service providers and
universities through the use of a single sign on system for users to access
multiple resources from different content providers; enables scalability for
resource providers since they can provide protected content to multiple
campuses and universities using a single authentication and authorization
framework; and provides ease of use and deployment by leveraging a campus'
existing identity management infrastructure. 

Universities that have recently joined InCommon include: Miami University;
Ohio University; Stanford University; University of Alabama at Birmingham;
University of California - Merced; University of California - Riverside; The
University of Chicago; University of Maryland, Baltimore; University of
Maryland Baltimore County; and University of Virginia.
 
For universities that do not yet have mature identity management systems in
place, ProtectNetwork, which recently joined the InCommon federation via
sponsorship by the University of Washington, is InCommon's first private
identity provider. ProtectNetwork gives users basic or fully-proofed
identity credentials to enable students and staff to gain access to
resources protected by the Shibboleth authorization system.

Vinay Kumar, president at ProtectNetwork added, "ProtectNetwork Identity
Provider service offers unique value to campuses and other institutions who
want to provide identity management services to their users but who may not
yet have the necessary systems in place to support this approach or who may
need to segment specific constituencies in different ways. By participating
in InCommon, ProtectNetwork allows a broader range of campuses and service
providers to take advantage of all the resources and benefits of a trusted
federated community by providing highly secure and authenticated identity
credentials for any segment of their user community."

About InCommon(R)
The InCommon Federation provides higher education institutions and their
sponsored resource partners with unparalleled privacy, security, and
scalability for accessing protected online resources. InCommon is based on
the concept of federated administration enabling participants to become part
of an association of organizations that agree on a set of attributes and
policies to exchange information about their users for access to restricted
resources. As a limited liability company, InCommon is operated by Internet2
and managed by an independent Steering Committee representing the higher
education and research community. For more information, visit
http://www.incommonfederation.org.

Media Contact:
Lauren Rotman

202.331.5345

Program Contact:
John Krienke

734-352-7095


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