George Washington University Certified for Bronze
The George Washington University has become certified for the InCommon Bronze Identity Assurance Profile under the InCommon Assurance Program. GW used the representation of conformance method for qualifying for Bronze certification. This simplified approach requires no audit; the identity provider attests to compliance by signing the assurance addendum to the InCommon participation agreement.
"GW has had a formal Identity and Access Management (IAM) Program since 2010, with a vision to provide simplified, timely, secure, and consistent access to necessary IT resources for our constituents throughout their lifecycle,” said Asif Hafiz, director of identity and access management services at the university. “Identity Assurance is key component of GW’s IAM program. It helps determine, with some level of certainty, that electronic credentials representing an identity can be trusted to belong to the entity. At GW, we feel that the InCommon assurance program provides an identity assurance assessment framework suitable for the higher education environment."
InCommon currently has two identity assurance profiles that have been approved by the U.S. government: InCommon Bronze and Silver. Bronze is comparable to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Level of Assurance 1. Silver, comparable to NIST’s Level of Assurance 2, requires proof of identity and has security appropriate for higher-risk transactions.
The InCommon Assurance Program supports InCommon’s mission to provide secure and privacy-preserving trust services for its participants. Enabling higher-value, higher-risk services requires increased trust by the organizations that run the identity and cloud services. The Assurance Program allows Identity Providers to demonstrate security and trust through the use of standards-based identity practices.
For more information about the Assurance Program please visit assurance.incommon.org. Campuses interested in the InCommon Assurance Program are invited to join the monthly Assurance calls, which are announced on the Assurance email list. To join this list, send email to sympa@incommon.org with the subject line: subscribe assurance.