InCommon Steering Committee Meeting - October 5, 2020

Minutes

Attending: Dee Childs, Christine Miki, Marc Wallman, Laura Paglione, Pankaj Shah, Sean Reynolds, Ann West, Brad Christ, Dave Robinson, Ted Hanss

With: Kevin Morooney, Dean Woodbeck, David Bantz (CTAB), Janemarie Duh (TAC), Steve Zoppi, Jessica Fink, Albert Wu, Von Welch

Regrets: Chris Sedore

Baseline Expectations v2 Review

  • Consultation continues until October 19 - no comments at this point
  • David Bantz reviewed the draft request for approval that will be delivered prior to the November Steering Committee meeting
  • BEv2 involves Implementing three additional components focused on security:
    • SIRTFI
    • Endpoints (URLs) must be encrypted with TLS 1.2 as a minimum
    • Identity Providers include an error URL in metadata when the SP can redirect users with issues
  • David reviewed an impact assessment that analyzed the 5906 entities registered in the InCommon Federation:
    • 99% of the registered entities already encrypt their connection endpoints. 60% passed the SSL Lab server test for encryption quality with a grade of A or better. 36% received a grade of B
    • 11% already assert compliance with the SIRTFI framework
    • 38% of 573 InCommon-registered IdPs have posted an error URL. 
  • The first round of Baseline included updating contact information in metadata; that updated information will help this time
  • We have good implementation guidelines to share with participants
  • As an FYI, there Is a parallel conversation internationally to implement a baseline program

Impacts of COVID-19 for the academic year

There was a discussion of the impacts of COVID-19, how it continues to impact campuses, and what it will mean for InCommon. Ted Hanss posed these questions:

  • What are some changes you've had to make since March that you think will endure beyond the pandemic?
  • Do we do meetings differently?
  • Will there be more or less demand on services (like eduroam)?
  • What have we observed and what are the implications for InCommon 

Dave Robinson reported that Grinnell planned to deploy eduroam at the beginning of the year, but ended up not having the resource bandwidth to act on it. Related to this, Ann mentioned that InCommon has just released a survey/request concerning the desired functionality and features or eduroam.

There was also a discussion about the prevalence of Zoom bombing of campus meetings and seminars that are widely advertised. Marc Wallman commented that the identity model assumed at in-person meetings are prevalent online. it would be desirable, for instance, to have a grouping function that would identify student-ness, say.

For conferences and service delivery:

  • Knowledge transfer - seem to work online too
  • Personal connections and hallway conversations - not good online
  • Also, the hybrid model struggles to succeed

Pankaj commented on the need for eduroam. There is a lot of pent-up demand and a need to simplify the joining/deployment of eduroam. We need to determine if/what we can do now to meet the demand. Waiting a year would be too late - people will find other solutions and probably more expensive.

InCommon Billing Cycle

Invoices going out in November. There are no fee increases. Keep ears open to any concerns.

Kevin Morooney

  • Internet2 delivered a message last spring that a planned increase would not take place
  • InCommon had an increase in 2017 and 2018. Discussion now is about any cost increases in areas like AWS, salaries, benefits
  • Billing cycle starts in November. Experience - in times of stress, procurement areas given marching instructions to question expenses.

Nominations

  • Email solicitation out for Steering and other groups.
  • Also will be looking for a new executive committee, so please consider whether you are interested in serving

Next Meeting - November 2, 2020

4 pm ET / 3 pm CT / 2 pm MT / 1 pm PT


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