Middleware Announcements

[Steve Olshansky <>]

The Internet2 MACE-Dir(ectories) Working Group conducted a survey on guest 
identities last July. The results of the survey are now available:
        http://middleware.internet2.edu/dir/GuestID/SurveySummary.html

We had 61 responses, including several outside the US. Our sincere thanks go 
to all who responded.

Cheers-
        Steve


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Intro to Guest systems survey

Institutions of learning often need to provide access to electronic services 
or resources to individuals who do not have a formal relation with the 
institution either as student or employee. Such users are often referred to 
as guests or affiliates or sponsored members of the institution (that is, 
rather than students, faculty, or staff). Access to a specific services may 
be provided to guests by ad hoc or exception processing, but such manual and 
application-specific processing easily leads to cumbersome and slow 
provisioning, inconsistent user experience, and consequent support headaches. 
Many institutions seeking to streamline, scale, and rationalize 
authentication and privilege management for an increasing number of services 
have developed systems (technologies and business processes) to manage guest 
identities - that is, to create and manage digital identities for guests, 
affiliates, or sponsored members within or parallel to management of digital 
identities for students and employees.

This survey aims to collect information about how institutions have addressed 
this need. The results should indicate both the breadth of approaches already 
deployed and inform decision-making by institutions looking to develop 
solutions.




--
Steve Olshansky
Director, Federated Technologies, Internet2
www.internet2.edu
www.incommon.org

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