Cirrus Identity Joins Internet2’s InCommon Affiliate Program
Brown University and Penn State First to launch Cirrus Gateway Service
WASHINGTON, D.C. – (April 18, 2014) – Internet2 today announced that Cirrus Identity has joined the InCommon Affiliate Program. Cirrus Identity offers cloud-hosted, user-friendly identity solutions that enable campuses to expand access and enhance collaboration. The Cirrus Gateway enables campuses to quickly and easily grant access to parents, alumni, incoming students, research collaborators and more using external identities such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
“We are pleased to have Cirrus Identity join our Affiliates program,” said Klara Jelinkova, senior associate vice president and chief information technology officer at the University of Chicago and chair of the InCommon Steering Committee. “Their gateway service has already proven valuable to our community, and the Cirrus staff has substantial experience in higher education. We appreciate their participation and support of InCommon.”
The first two campuses to launch the Cirrus Gateway Service are Brown University, for use with the continuing education program and testing with the new alumni portal, and Penn State, for their Confluence wiki and an online scholarship repository.
Internet2’s InCommon Affiliate Program provides the research and education community with a way to safely and efficiently connect with partners that can help build the necessary underlying infrastructure that supports federated identity and access management.
“Cirrus Identity joined InCommon as a sponsored partner last August and is delighted now to join the InCommon Affiliate program,” said Dedra Chamberlin, chief executive officer of Cirrus Identity. “The Cirrus Gateway Service is now in production and offers a campus-wide enterprise version, with an individual Service Provider level coming soon."
The Enterprise subscription is feature-rich, and includes the authentication gateway itself, the Cirrus Console for easy integration of Service Providers with the gateway, and a configurable Discovery Service or metadata bundle, if organizations prefer to run their own discovery. The company will release in beta a lightweight invitation service by the end of April 2014.
“We started Cirrus Identity because we know very well the pain points of identity in higher ed thanks to our 20-plus years combined working in the field,” Chamberlin explained. “We are particularly interested in delivering well-designed and intuitive solutions that integrate social identities like Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, into the higher ed landscape as a way to expand access and enhance collaboration. We look forward to deepening our relationships with identity management teams and service providers across the country so we can deliver solutions that best meet your needs.”
For additional information, see cirrusidentity.com. For a no-obligation test of the service, please email info@cirrusidentity.com.
About Cirrus Identity
Cirrus Identity offers cloud-hosted, user-friendly identity solutions that enable campuses to expand access and enhance collaboration.Their initial product, the Cirrus Gateway, enables campuses to quickly and easily grant access to parents, alumni, incoming students, research collaborators and more using social identities such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Cirrus Gateway services are offered on a subscription basis for an entire campus (enterprise) or an individual Service Provider (business). For more information, please visit http://cirrusidentity.com.
About Internet2’s InCommon
InCommon®, operated by Internet2®, serves the US education and research communities, supporting a common framework of trust services, including the US identity management trust federation for research and education, a community-driven Certificate Service, an Assurance Program providing higher levels of trust, and a multifactor authentication program. InCommon has more than 600 participants, including higher education institutions and research organizations, and their sponsored partners, making federated identity available to more than 7.8 million individuals. For more information, see www.incommon.org and www.internet2.edu.
Multifactor Authentication, Assurance, and the Multi-Context Broker
IAM Online – Wednesday, April 30, 2014
3 pm ET / 2 pm CT / 1 pm MT / Noon PT
www.incommon.org/iamonline
Is your campus considering the implementation of multifactor authentication to bolster security beyond passwords? Are you considering implementing multiple local or InCommon Assurance profiles? If so, and you use Shibboleth single sign-on software, your job just got easier. Join us for this IAM Online to hear about the needs for multifactor authentication and assurance at two universities, and how those needs are met by the new Multi-Context Broker.
With partial funding from the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), the Internet2 and InCommon communities have released the Multi-Context Broker, an extension to the Shibboleth software that makes it easier for your organization to support the increasing demand for multifactor authentication and identity assurance, while simplifying the user experience.
See this wiki page for more information about the Multi-Context Broker: https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/x/BozFAg
Speakers:
- David Walker, InCommon Technical Advisory Committee
* Keith Wessel, Identity Management Service Manager, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - David Langenberg, Senior Systems Programmer, University of Chicago
Connecting
We use Adobe Connect for slide sharing and audio: http://internet2.adobeconnect.com/iam-online. For more details, including back-up phone bridge information, see www.incommon.org/iamonline.
About IAM Online
IAM Online is a monthly online education series brought to you by Internet2’s InCommon community and the EDUCAUSE Higher Education Information and Security Council.
Registration Now Open for Two InCommon Shibboleth Installation Workshops
July 24-25, 2014 - Indianapolis, Indiana
September 29-30, 2014 - Newark, New Jersey
www.incommon.org/shibtraining
Need training on Shibboleth installation? Registration is now open for the next two InCommon Shibboleth Installation Workshops. Each workshop spends one day installing the identity provider software and one day on the service provider software.
The July 24-25 sessions are at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis* and are co-sponsored by Indiana University. Please note - if you intend to register for Indy, the hotel room block closes on May 31.
The September 29-30 workshop is at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey.
These directed self-paced workshops allow attendees to move through the material at their own speed, while having experienced trainers provide overviews and one-on-one help with the process. The workshops provide technical installation and configuration experience with Shibboleth version 2.x. Attendance is limited to 40 registrants each day.
The workshops will offer the chance to:
- Install either a prototype Shibboleth identity or service provider in a virtual machine environment.
- Hear tips for configuring and running the software in production.
- Learn about integration with LDAP directories and selected packages.
Knowledge of identity management concepts and related implementation experience is strongly recommended. Organizations are encouraged to send one or two attendees who best represent the following functions:
- System install, integration, and ongoing support staff
- Campus technology architects
For more information and a link to register, go to www.incommon.org/shibtraining.
To learn more about Shibboleth, see the Shibboleth wiki (wiki.shibboleth.net). More information on federated identity can be found at www.incommon.org.
InCommon Affiliate Webinar Series: Cirrus Identity
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
2 pm ET | 1 pm CT | Noon MT | 11 am PT
http://internet2.adobeconnect.com/affiliate (slides and audio)
Are you looking for ways to make it easier to enable access for external users like parents, research collaborators, incoming students, and alumni? Are you interested in exploring the use of external identities, such as those provided by Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and WindowsLive? The Cirrus Identity Gateway Service, now in production, may be your solution. The authentication gateway enables access with external identities and includes the Cirrus Console for easy integration of your service providers with the gateway.
Join us for this InCommon Affiliate webinar to learn more about the Cirrus Gateway Service and to hear about use cases at early adopter campuses Brown University and Penn State.
Presenters:
Dedra Chamberlin, CEO, Cirrus Identity
Lucas Rockwell, CTO, Cirrus Identity
Phone Back-up
Audio will be available via Adobe Connect. There is a dial-in back-up:
734-615-7474, or 866-411-0013
PIN: 0105266#
About Cirrus Identity
Cirrus Identity offers cloud-hosted, user-friendly identity solutions that enable campuses to expand access and enhance collaboration.Their initial product, the Cirrus Gateway, enables campuses to quickly and easily grant access to parents, alumni, incoming students, research collaborators and more using social identities such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Cirrus Gateway services are offered on a subscription basis for an entire campus (enterprise) or an individual Service Provider (business). For more information, please visit http://cirrusidentity.com.
About the InCommon Affiliate Webinar Series
InCommon Affiliates offer software, support, integration, and consulting related to identity and access management, and other trust services. This webinar series provides an opportunity for affiliates to share ideas and solutions with the community. You can learn more about the affiliates at www.incommon.org/affiliates.
Internet2, U.S. Research and Education Makes First Step Toward Global Interfederation
Federated trust expands internationally as InCommon signs eduGAIN Declaration
Internet2’s Trust and Identity and InCommon Steering Committee has voted to join the international eduGAIN service, which interconnects identity federations worldwide. The group agreed to the eduGAIN declaration, the first formal step toward interconnecting Internet2’s InCommon - the U.S. research and education identity federation - with its peers in 30 other federations worldwide. The vote took place last week at the Internet2 Global Summit in Denver.
The eduGAIN service, created and operated by the pan-European GÉANT network, enables the trustworthy exchange of identity and access information among identity federations worldwide.
“Thanks to significant work by InCommon community members and working groups, we are making the first step toward worldwide interfederation,” said Klara Jelinkova, committee chair and senior associate vice president and chief information technology officer at the University of Chicago. “We still have much work to do on the technical details, but this signals our commitment to the trusted exchange of identity information with our partners around the world.”
Through eduGAIN, universities and their researchers and educators can access a greater range of services, delivered by multiple federations in a collaborative environment. Service providers for research, scholarship, and administration will reach international partners in other federations who will seamlessly benefit from the wider range of services.
“We expect eduGAIN will provide significant benefits to InCommon participants,” said Shel Waggener, senior vice president at Internet2. “Identity providers will be able to make many more services available, and our sponsored partners will greatly expand their scope. This is a big win for all involved.”
About GÉANT
GÉANT is the pan-European research and education network that interconnects Europe’s National Research and Education Networks (NRENs). Together we connect over 50 million users at 10,000 institutions across Europe, supporting research in areas such as energy, the environment, space and medicine. eduGAIN is a key service developed within the GÉANT program, which enables the trustworthy exchange of information related to authentication, authorization and identity between member federations. See www.geant.net and www.edugain.org.
About Internet2
Internet2® is a member-owned advanced technology community founded by the nation's leading higher education institutions in 1996. Internet2 provides a collaborative environment for U.S. research and education organizations to solve common technology challenges, and to develop innovative solutions in support of their educational, research, and community service missions.
Internet2 also operates the nation’s largest and fastest, coast-to-coast research and education network, in which the Network Operations Center is powered by Indiana University. Internet2 serves more than 93,000 community anchor institutions, 250 U.S. universities, 70 government agencies, 38 regional and state education networks, 80 leading corporations working with our community and more than 65 national research and education networking partners representing more than 100 countries.
Internet2 offices are located in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Denver, Colo.; Emeryville, Calif.; Washington, D.C; and West Hartford, Conn. For more information, visit www.internet2.edu or follow @Internet2 on Twitter.
About Internet2’s InCommon
InCommon®, operated by Internet2®, serves the U.S. education and research communities, supporting a common framework of trust services, including the U.S. identity management trust federation for research and education, a community-driven Certificate Service, an Assurance Program providing higher levels of trust, and a multifactor authentication program. InCommon has more than 600 participants, including higher education institutions and research organizations, and their sponsored partners.
Contact: Dean Woodbeck
woodbeck@internet2.edu
(906) 523-9620