By Paul Caskey

Last month we asked the InCommon community to provide feedback on the InCommon Certificate Service in the form of an online survey. We use the feedback to develop work plans for the service for the coming year. This is a quick update on where we’re at with that process.

We're very pleased that we received 164 responses to the survey. With 424 subscribers, that represents an approximately 30% response. This feedback is a critical component to the InCommon Certificate Service. This community-defined service couldn’t be operated successfully without your feedback, so thank you!

We’ll provide detailed results soon, but for now, here are a few quick takeaways from the results:

• In general, folks are satisfied with the service (86% positive).

• We see very strong demand for the service to support the ACME protocol.
• There are a significant number of institutions who said they have MFA capabilities (81%), yet, of those, we were surprised at the lack of integration with the institutional IdP/SSO service (60%).
• We found it interesting that SSO for CCM was listed in the top 4 issues of both the high and medium priority items of potential value to the cert service, yet SSO for CCM has been available in production for several months!

• We thought it interesting that there were a couple of comments on price being an issue. Perhaps we should explore alternative consumption models?
• DCV is widely regarded as a significant challenge in using the service.
• The EV certificate process was also frequently listed as a challenge. Last year, Comodo attempted to ease this process with the implementation of 'anchor certificates'. Perhaps more is needed.
• There were several good ideas for webinars/training mentioned in the comments and we’re working with Comodo to deliver that.

As you can see, we have some things to work on in the coming year to ensure that the InCommon Certificate Service continues to provide a significant value.  And, as we said, it would not be possible to deliver that value were it not for you, our tremendous community.

So, thanks again for providing feedback in this year’s survey and thank you for subscribing to the InCommon Certificate Service. As always, please let us know what else we can do to increase the value your institution receives from the service.