Blog from August, 2011

InCommon and PESC are pleased to announce a new strategic partnership to promote shared standards across the Research and Education community. The agreement has been ratified by the InCommon Steering Committee and PESC’s Board of Directors.

Under the agreement, the organizations will work together on common priorities and align efforts to advance each other’s goals. The goal will be to promote the development and adoption of shared standards and infrastructure across the higher education community, its partners and stakeholders. This collaboration will focus on areas of strategic importance to both organizations and to the education community.

Both InCommon and PESC are champions of standards that support research, learning and administrative services. InCommon develops and promotes trust-related services based on community standards, while PESC develops and promotes data-interchange standards related to electronic document interchange, especially in the area of education records and student data.

“PESC’s mission of enabling efficient and secure student data exchange nicely complements InCommon’s trust focus for research and education. “ said Jack Suess, chair of the InCommon Steering Committee and CIO of University of Maryland-Baltimore County. “Our organizations intend to leverage our shared belief in the value and strength of community-driven standards and best practices.”

"One example of how this collaboration is bearing fruit is a joint project between PESC and InCommon to bring vendors, campus IT departments, registrars, and admissions & financial aid officers together to look at how we can use Federation and single sign-on to streamline the transition of students between high school and their college experience,” stated Charles Leonhardt, principal technologist, Georgetown University and chair of PESC’s Electronic Authentication/Authorization (EA2) Task Force.

The EA2 Task Force will be meeting in person at PESC’s upcoming Fall 2011 Data Summit being held October 12-14, 2011, in San Francisco. Leaders of the new project, AdmitMe, will also host an open discussion for registrants including how to participate going forward. Registration and hotel information for the Fall 2011 Data Summit is posted at www.PESC.org.

About InCommon

InCommon, operated by Internet2, serves the U.S. education and research communities, supporting a common framework of trust services, including the InCommon Federation and the community-driven InCommon Certificate Service. The InCommon Federation, the U.S. trust federation for research and education, enables scalable, trusted collaborations among its community of participants. Identity Providers give their users single sign-on convenience and privacy protection, while Service Providers control access to their protected resources. The Certificate Service offers unlimited certificates to the U.S. higher education community for one fixed annual fee. For more information, see www.incommon.org.

About PESC

Established in 1997 at the National Center for Higher Education and located in Washington, D.C., PESC is a non-profit, community-based, 501 (c)(3) umbrella association of colleges and universities; college and university systems; professional and commercial organizations; data, software and service providers; non-profit organizations and associations; and state and federal government agencies. Through open and transparent community participation, PESC enables cost-effective connectivity between data systems to accelerate performance and service, to simplify data access and research, and to improve data quality along the education lifecycle.

PESC envisions national and international interoperability, that is a trustworthy, inter-connected environment built by and between communities of interest in which data flows seamlessly from one system to another and throughout the entire eco-system when and where needed without compatibility barriers but in a safe, secure, reliable, and efficient manner. To achieve the mission and the vision, PESC organizes activities to: accelerate performance and service, reduce cost, lead collaborative development, set and maintain common data standards, promote best practices, link public and private sectors, and serve as data experts.

While PESC promotes the implementation and usage of data exchange standards, PESC does not set (create or establish) policies related to privacy and security. Organizations and entities using PESC standards and services should ensure they comply with FERPA and all local, state, federal and international rules on privacy and security as applicable. For more information, see www.PESC.org.

Effective today, the cap on the number of valid client (personal) certificates per unique email address has been eliminated for all subscribers to the InCommon Certificate Service.

Since the deployment of client certificates, community discussions have identified some scenarios where having three or more client certificates per email address might be useful. InCommon and our partner, Comodo, agreed and have made available unlimited client certificates per email address.

Normally, most certificate authorities will only allow you to have one valid client certificate per unique email address.

Previously, the InCommon Certificate Service has allowed subscribers to receive up to two certificates per unique email address. This flexibility has made it possible for sites to issue an escrowed encryption key, while also issuing the user a non-escrowed and non-repudiable digital signing key, as required by state law in some jurisdictions. Under this old scenario, however, an attempt to request a third certificate for that same email address would be denied.

A few anticipated questions are addressed below. If you have other questions, please email admin@incommon.org.

The InCommon Certificate Service provides unlimited SSL, personal signing (e.g. client), extended validation, encryption, and code signing certificates for one annual fee. This includes certificates for all domains owned by an institution of higher education. (www.incommon.org/cert)

FAQ:

Q. Why did you make this change for all users of the InCommon Certificate Service, rather than just the particular sites that might need this change?

A. Whatever setting we pick for this applies to all participants. Picking an unlimited number of client certificates per unique email address is an option that will provide flexibility for all potential client certificate usage scenarios.

Q. Will I need to do anything for my school to be able to issue three or more client certificates per unique email address?

A. No, this change will be transparently made for all InCommon Certificate Service subscribers.

Q. We're using client certificates from InCommon, but currently only issue one or two client client certificates per unique email address. Do we need to do anything?
A. No.

Q. We subscribe to the InCommon Certificate Service, but we don't use client certs. Will this change affect us in any way? Do we need to do anything?
A. No, you won't be affected and you shouldn't need to do anything.

InCommon News - August 8, 2011

In This Issue:

• Pennsylvania System, InCommon Develop Template Agreement
• Federated Research.gov Proves Popular
• InCommon Email Lists Change Names
• New Participant, Affiliate Logos Introduced
• Joe St Sauver to Manage Certificate Service
• New Participants in July

Pennsylvania System, InCommon Develop Template Agreement

The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), a consortium of 14 universities, has developed a standard participation agreement with InCommon. Read the full story at https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/x/kJSKAQ.

Federated Research.gov Proves Popular

Since announcing the availability of federated access to its Research.gov portal, the National Science Foundation reports that 11 universities have completed the relatively simple integration process, with more than 20 in various stages of the process. Federated access allows researchers to log into Research.gov with their university credentials and then connect seamlessly to FastLane. To receive details about partnering with NSF, email feedback@research.gov.

InCommon Email Lists Change Names

InCommon has changed the names of several email lists in an effort to simplify list names and clarify list purposes. https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/x/sZmKAQ

New Participant, Affiliate Logos Introduced

InCommon has developed new logos, including one for use by any InCommon participant and one for use by InCommon affiliates. https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/x/3JiKAQ

Joe St Sauver to Manage Certificate Service

Joe St Sauver, an active participant and well-known name in higher education security circles, has joined InCommon to manage the InCommon Certificate Service and support the development of additional trust services. https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/x/GJOKAQ

New Participants in July

Higher Education

• A.T. Still University (www.atsu.edu)
• Chapman University (www.chapman.edu)
• McNally Smith College (www.mcnallysmith.edu
• St. Louis University (www.slu.edu)
• University of Idaho (www.uidaho.edu)
• University of Kentucky (www.uky.edu)
• University of Wisconsin-Superior (www.uwsuper.edu)

Research Organizations

• GENI (www.geni.net)
• Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTERN) (www.lternet.edu)

Sponsored Partners

• CollegeNet (www.collegenet.com)
• Nolij (www.nolij.com)
• UHC (www.uhc.edu)

About CollegeNet

CollegeNET, Inc. is a leading developer of Web-based systems for higher education and nonprofit organizations, serving more than 1,300 clients worldwide. The company helps institutions improve efficiencies, reduce paper consumption and cut costs by providing advanced tools for managing resources, streamlining information, and better serving students and prospects. As an InCommon Federation participant, CollegeNET enables convenient authentication for users of its Shibboleth-compatible systems, including the 25Live® event management and e-commerce system, the Admit® online admissions application evaluation system, and the What·Do·You·Think?® online course and instructor evaluation system. For more information, visit corp.collegenet.com or contact sales@collegenet.com.

About Nolij

Nolij Corporation has been innovating and delivering enterprise content management (ECM) solutions to the higher education market since 1999. The latest version of Nolij Web, with its zero footprint Java framework, capable of running securely in any browser and on any platform - including native support for all popular mobile devices - has the features and functionality that leading institutions demand today. Hundreds of colleges and universities world-wide rely on Nolij technology to improve the capture, input, availability and flow of information within and throughout their enterprise. Now part of InCommon, Nolij Web offers a wide variety of federated features including:

• document scanning, viewing, and indexing with automatic full text capture
• live integrated data forms
• built-in, robust workflow
• tight integration with all major enterprise email systems

Federation participants can now license a fully web-based enterprise content management system - as a SaaS solution deployed via the cloud or as a self-hosted solution deployed on-site - that operates across all popular mobile and desktop platforms (e.g. Mac, Linux, Windows, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Palm) and comes standard with the security and convenience of the InCommon Single Sign On configuration.

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InCommon News is published for InCommon participants and other interested parties. InCommon is an LLC of Internet2. Send feedback or comments to info@incommon.org.

This newsletter is sent to announce@incommon.org. To subscribe or unsubscribe, send an email to sympa@incommon.org with one of these messages in the subject: subscribe announce or unsubscribe announce. You can also subscribe to the InCommon RSS news feed, which includes this newsletter, by visiting www.incommon.org.

InCommon has changed the names of several email lists in an effort to simplify list names and clarify their purposes.

Those already subscribed to these lists need to nothing - they have been subscribed to the new lists names. The old addresses will work for the time being, but users should begin using the new, shorter versions, and update their address books and adjust their filters.

A list of the old and new names of the affected lists are included here:

The changes that will affect most InCommon participants are the participants and announce lists. The participants list (participants@incommon.org) is a discussion list, while announce@incommon.org is a place for InCommon to distribute news about the affiliate program, assurance program, certificate service, monthly newsletters, and other information.

To subscribe to any InCommon list, send email to sympa@incommon.org. In the subject line of the email, include a command with this format: subscribe LISTNAME (note that some of these lists are restricted).

InCommon has developed new logos, including one for use by any InCommon participant and one for use by InCommon affiliates. The logos (in EPS and GIF versions) are available for download at www.incommon.org/logos.html, where you will also find usage guidelines.

We’re encouraging everyone to use the logos as a way to promote InCommon and the InCommon community. For example:

• A university might use the participant logo to promote its use of federated identity management.
• A certificate service subscriber might display the participant logo on its internal documentation pages.
• A sponsored partner might use that same logo to inform potential customers and clients that their service is federated and available via InCommon.
• Higher education and research organizations might display the logo to indicate support for using federated access for collaborative research, course-sharing, or other shared services.

At the same time, we’ve also developed logos for each of three InCommon services: the InCommon Federation, the InCommon Certificate Service, and the InCommon Identity Assurance Program. You will begin to see these logos on the InCommon web and in our publications. The new service logos are displayed at www.incommon.org/logos.html.

We also asked our designer to spiff up our publications with some new design templates as well. These will make their debut at the Internet2 2011 Fall Member Meeting.