Middleware Announcements

[Renee Frost <>]

The  April 2005 issue of the Shibbing News is now available at 
http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/docs/shibbing-news-Apr05.html . This issue 
contains project information, service provider updates, partner 
information, shibboleth success stories, and information about recent and 
upcoming meeting presentations. A few highlights are included at the end of 
this email; however, the full collection of stories are available at the 
above url.


+++ Shibboleth Case Study Tutorial at the Spring 2005 Internet2 Member Meeting

NMI-EDIT tutorial offers a chance to view the variety of applications 
enabled by the Shibboleth technology including administrative, wireless, 
health-related, financial aid, and library services. You'll be able to 
discuss implementation issues with the project leads and stakeholders.
http://www.nmi-edit.org/I2-SMM-2005_Shibboleth_tutorial.html

Registration is open, but seating is limited. Even if you plan to attend 
the Internet2 Spring Member Meeting, please register separately for this 
tutorial by 22 April at the URL listed above.


+++ US Federal E-Authentication Initiative and Shibboleth's Role

This Initiative is implementing a PKI-based authentication infrastructure 
for federal employees and contractors, and a Federated Administration 
infrastructure based on SAML for citizens, campuses, and businesses 
interacting with government departments via the web. Information about 
E-authn is available at http://www.cio.gov/eauthentication/ .  Office of 
Management and Budget has directed that 30 government agencies have to have 
at least one outward-facing E-authn enabled application by Sept 30, 2005; 
NSF is working on Fastlane. We expect the Identity Provider component of 
Shibboleth v1.3.1 to be certified for use by campuses. This would allow 
members of campuses 1) whose middleware infrastructure and processes meet 
federal guidelines, and 2) who are running the certified version of 
Shibboleth to interact in a Federated manner with government web sites.


+++  Shibboleth v 1.3 update

A list of major new features expected in Shibboleth v1.3 is available at 
https://authdev.it.ohio-state.edu/twiki/bin/view/Shibboleth/ShibOnedotThree. 
A packaged beta should be generally available by May 2, 2005. This release 
will inter-operate with previous Shibboleth releases v1.1 and v1.2. 
However, this will be the last release of Shibboleth to support the AQM 
format used in the v1.1 release.