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.