Middleware Announcements

[Renee Frost <>]

INTERNET2 RELEASES PRIVACY-PRESERVING WEB AUTHORIZATION SOFTWARE

Open source Shibboleth software developed and tested by more than 20 leading companies and universities

ANN ARBOR, MI -- Internet2 today announced the availability of Shibboleth 1.0, the first production version of software implementing a leading online authorization architecture.  Shibboleth, which is standards-based and open source, incorporates active privacy management while enabling inter-institutional sharing of Web resources subject to access controls.

Blackboard, WebCT and WebAssign, course management software providers, and EBSCO, JSTOR and SFX, online information companies, have already begun to incorporate Shibboleth technology into their products and services.  Shibboleth has been widely tested with over 20 leading universities and research institutions participating in pilot deployments.  SWITCH, the Swiss national research and education networking organization has selected Shibboleth as their official authentication and authorization architecture and the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), a major educational initiative by the National Science Foundation, will use Shibboleth to allow access to customized or restricted content and services.

"Shibboleth has made cross-institutional course management, content management, portfolio management systems and other home grown applications, all accessible through integrated and seamless online teaching and learning environments across the enterprise,"said Christopher Etesse, Senior Director of Technology at Blackboard.  "By combining Shibboleth with the open architecture of the Blackboard Learning System, the academic community has gained a tremendous solution for the next generation of online education."

"The availability of Shibboleth 1.0 is a major milestone in a long road.  The Coalition for Networked Information led much of the work articulating the requirements for a system like Shibboleth some five years ago; designing and building it has been a major effort that required the best talent from the higher education community," said Dr. Clifford Lynch, Executive Director for the Coalition for Networked Information.  "We continue to work with Internet2 and the broader community to validate and widely deploy this essential and badly-needed infrastructure for inter-organizational networked information applications.  One of the first applications will be managing access to content licensed by research libraries on behalf of their campus communities.  User privacy is a core value of these libraries, and the adoption of Shibboleth in this area emphasizes the extent to which Shibboleth's design fundamentally recognizes and honors user privacy."

"We are excited by the increasing momentum and dedication of the developers, as demonstrated by the release of Shibboleth 1.0," said David Millman, Director of Research and Development at Academic Information Systems, Columbia University and member of the National Science Digital Library (NDSL) Core Integration Team.  "NSDL has long been committed to the Shibboleth technology because of its scalable, distributed architecture and its privacy protections, both critical goals of the NSDL itself."

"JSTOR has been looking for a replacement to the current IP authentication model in the academic community," said David Yakimischak, Chief Technology Officer for JSTOR, an online resource of scholarly journals.  "We see Shibboleth as the best current alternative, for it provides simplicity, scalability, extensibility, and the protection of privacy within an open, standard architecture.  Our early prototypes with Shibboleth have been successful, and we anticipate ever increasing interest and demand from our participating academic institutions."

Shibboleth emphasizes federated administration and access control based on attributes rather than identity to provide a scalable and extensible framework for inter-institutional authorization.  The Shibboleth software was developed under the auspices of the National Science Foundation's Middleware Initiative (NMI).

Institutions currently involved in the pilot program include: Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Georgetown University, London School of Economics, New York University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State, University of Colorado, University of Michigan, University of Texas Health Center at Houston, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin -- Madison, University of California Office of the President, Blackboard Inc., EBSCO, JSTOR, OCLC, SFX, WebAssign and WebCT.

Shibboleth is an Internet2 project designed to develop architectures, policy structures, practical technologies and open source implementations.  Shibboleth 1.0 has been tested with the Apache Web server on Red Hat Linux versions 7.2 and 7.3, and on Solaris 2.8, with Microsoft Windows2000 versions for both Apache and IIS expected to be available soon.  For more information about the Internet2 Middleware Initiative and Shibboleth, visit: http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/

About Blackboard Inc.
Blackboard Inc. was founded with a vision to transform the Internet into a powerful environment for the education experience.  Blackboard is a leading provider of e-Education solutions serving the global needs of primary and secondary schools, higher education, corporations and government agencies.  Blackboard is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices and staff across North America, Europe and Asia.  Visit www.blackboard.com for more information.

About Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
CNI is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity.  Some 200 institutions representing higher education, publishing, network and telecommunications, information technology, and libraries and library organizations make up CNI's Members.  CNI is jointly sponsored by EDUCAUSE and the Association of Research Libraries.  For more information, visit www.cni.org.

About National Science Digital Library (NSDL)
NSDL is a digital library of exemplary resource collections and services, organized in support of science education at all levels.  Starting with a partnership of NSDL-funded projects, NSDL is emerging as a center of innovation in digital libraries as applied to education, and a community center for groups focused on digital-library-enabled science education.  For more information, visit: www.nsdl.org.

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, visit: www.internet2.edu.
 

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CONTACT:
Michelle Pollak
Internet2
(202) 331-5345

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