CIC
Staff Contact: Galen Rafferty |
Identity Management Conference
June 5-6, 2006
University Place Conference Center & Hotel
Indianapolis, Indiana
Hosted by the Chief Information Officers of the
Committee on Institutional Cooperation
The Identity Management Conference Report is now available!
The CIC Chief Information Officers are hosting a 1.5 day meeting of select campus teams to discuss campus issues involving Identity Management.
Conference Goals:
- Develop a common language around Identity Management.
- To share about what is happening on each CIC campus in terms of identity management and middleware.
- To identify the intrainstitutional collaboration opportunities as well as what the CIC universities might do jointly to push the current state of the art.
What does "Identity Management" mean?
Identity Management is an integrated system of business processes, policies and technologies that enable organizations to facilitate and control their users' access to critical online applications and resources while protecting confidential personal and business information from unauthorized users. It represents a category of interrelated solutions that are employed to administer user authentication, access rights, access restrictions, account profiles, passwords, and other attributes supportive of users' roles/profiles on one or more applications or systems.
What is middleware?
Middleware is the technology used to implement Identity Management policies. Middleware, or "glue," is a layer of software between the network and the applications. This software provides services such as identification, authentication, authorization, directories, and security. One instance of process improvement through middleware is Single Sign On (SSO). SSO between applications allows users to authenticate once, then move seamlessly from service to service without having to login repeatedly. SSO between institutions is now technically feasible through "federation" middleware. This allows students and faculty to securely access a partner university's libraries, data and computing resources across the Internet. Identity management policies are an important aspect of the trust needed between institutions to join in a federation.