News for and about the Internet2 community

Ann Arbor, Mich. - December 21, 2009 – The InCommon Federation has announced 
the achievement of a milestone - its community now includes more than 4 
million end users. The federation also has almost 200 participating 
organizations, including colleges and universities, research labs, agencies 
of the U.S. government, and private companies that offer web-based resources 
and services.

When institutions join InCommon, their faculty, researchers, students, and 
staff can use their organizational IDs and passwords to access on-campus and 
off-campus services, rather than maintaining multiple passwords and 
usernames. As a result, people use the same credentials to access such 
third-party services as library databases, multimedia content, research 
information and services provided by U.S. government agencies, and career 
center systems and tools. 

"One of the primary goals of federations like InCommon is to allow 
universities to provide access to a wide range of off-campus resources while 
still protecting the security and privacy of their students, faculty, and 
staff," explained Kevin Morooney, chief information officer and vice provost 
for information technology at Pennsylvania State University and incoming 
chair of the InCommon Steering Committee. "It is gratifying to see that the 
federation continues to gain traction within higher education, with research 
labs and consortia, and with agencies of the U.S. government."

InCommon was recently one of the organizations recognized with the 2009 
EDUCAUSE Catalyst Award, honoring innovations that provide groundbreaking 
solutions to major information technology challenges in higher education. 
EDUCAUSE, a non-profit association, has more than 2,200 college and 
university members and 17,000 individual members.
 
InCommon includes two types of members – identity providers and service 
providers. The identity providers – colleges, universities, and research 
agencies – already supply user IDs and passwords to their students, faculty 
and staff to allow them to access campus resources like email. Service 
providers deliver some type of online resource, such as a library database or 
a course management system. 

When these entities join InCommon, they agree on a set of shared policies, 
processes, and technology standards. One of those standards is a process for 
single sign-on, so one set of credentials provides access to resources from 
any service provider, without the need for another user ID or password.

This greatly streamlines collaboration among multiple organizations because 
federation members agree on these policies and processes once, rather than 
each time they sign a contract with a new partner. It also improves security 
and privacy, as the identity provider releases only the information needed 
for the service provider to make an access decision. Many times, this does 
not require the release of even an individual’s name or other personally 
identifiable information.

For more information on InCommon and a full list of participants, visit: 
http://www.incommon.org

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About InCommon(R)
InCommon provides the U.S. higher education and research community with the 
common framework for trustworthy shared management of access to online 
resources. InCommon facilitates the development of a community-based common 
trust fabric sufficient to enable participants to make appropriate decisions 
about the release of identity information and the control of access to 
protected online resources. InCommon is intended to enable production-level 
end-user access to a wide variety of protected resources. For more 
information, visit http://www.incommon.org.