UMBC Achieves Bronze Certification
The University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) has become the third higher-education organization to become certified for the Bronze Identity Assurance Profile under the InCommon Assurance Program.
UMBC is also the second to use the representation of conformance method to qualify for Bronze certification. Using this simplified approach for Bronze requires no audit; the identity provider attests to compliance by signing the assurance addendum to the InCommon participation agreement.
“UMBC believes Identity management is absolutely essential to campus cyber security, and Bronze and Silver represent consensus best practice in identity management,” said Jack Suess, vice president of information technology and CIO at UMBC. “It is in our interest to utilize these best practices in designing and implementing our identity management processes.”
InCommon developed the assurance program as part of its 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.
InCommon currently has two US-Government approved assurance profiles — Bronze and Silver. Bronze is comparable to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Assurance 1 level, which has credential security adequate for basic Internet interactions. Silver, comparable to NIST’s level of Assurance 2, requires proof of identity and has security appropriate for higher-risk transactions.
More information about the assurance program is at assurance.incommon.org.