BCNETwork News
 
December 2005

FOSTERING TRUST AND RESPECT WITHIN BC'S GOVERNMENT AND HIGHER EDUCATION COMMUNITY: BCNET HOSTS AN IDENTITY MANAGEMENT WORKSHOP

On November 24th, 2005 the BCNET Identity Management Working Group hosted an Identity Management Workshop; an opportunity for representatives from education and research institutions, government, public health and industry to network, exchange ideas and educate each other on respective challenges and initiatives for identity management.

Participants from UBC, SFU, UVic, BCIT, UNBC, RRU, and TRU as well as representatives from the provincial government, health authorities and BC Campus spent the day at the SFU IRMACS Centre on Burnaby Mountain.

Why Identity Management?

Higher education and research institutions, as well as government sectors, are concerned about protecting access to sensitive information. As vast amounts of often changing users access these networks, the process of protecting access to this highly sensitive information can become increasingly complex. Personal information, intellectual property, and classified and/or cutting-edge research material needs to be protected from unauthorized viewers.

As the higher education and research environment drifts into the cyber-world through the use of e-learning technologies, the Internet, and online collaborative tools, it is no longer realistic to expect that users can easily present valid photo identification in person at the institution before an account is created. As more and more accounts are created for one individual, the likelihood for losing, forgetting or sharing user names and passwords increases exponentially, resulting in strain on organizational IT departments and decreased security.

Breaking-down Boundaries

For the first half of the event each member site was asked to share information about their current identity management, authentication/authorization infrastructure. A representative from the provincial government and BC Campus also presented, as well as special guest speaker, Lauren Wood, a Senior Technical Program Manager for Interoperability and Technology Partnerships at Sun Microsystems. Ms. Wood presented on the Liberty Alliance Project, an open standard for federated network identity that supports all current and emerging network devices.

Ms. Wood’s presentation was an excellent segue into the afternoon session which shifted to collaboration issues such as federated authentication and authorization.

One Solution, A Federated System

A federated identity management system between BCNET member institutions would allow individuals at each institution to use the same user name and password they would use at their host institution to sign-on to services and applications at another institution. Each institution would depend on the other to authenticate their respective users and vouch for their access to services. This dependence would imply trust that each institution has solid security and user-management practices.

Following the BCNET Identity Management Workshop the representatives from the member institutions voiced interest in placing this trust in one another and moving forward with a federated environment for wireless sharing within the higher education community in the province.

About BCNET's Identity Management Working Group

By creating a working group under BCNET’s Applications Advisory Committee, BCNET's members have identified Identity Management as a relevant and increasingly practical focus. Consisting of representatives from each of the BCNET member institutions, the BCNET Identity Management Working Group will seek to create a forum for inter-institutional discussion of identity management issues while encouraging the collaboration and exchange of ideas and information between BCNET member institutions, other provincial post-secondary educational institutions, and provincial and federal public sectors, including government and health care authorities.

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