Wednesday, December 6, 2006

Internet2 Demos "Shibboleth" Interoperability with NSF's FastLane

The Internet2 community demonstrated the interoperability of its "Shibboleth" federated identity management software with the National Science Foundation's (NSF) FastLane online grant administration system. NSF's FastLane is used by over 250,000 researchers, students, faculty and other research professionals to efficiently manage their grants and proposals via a secure web interface.



The Internet2 researchers are seeking to establish large-scale interoperation between the InCommon Federation, serving U.S. higher education and its partners, and the U.S. E-Authentication Identity Federation, serving U.S. government agencies.



Shibboleth, a SAML-based software suite, provides Web Single Sign On (SSO) capability and a secure attribute exchange framework to enable individual access to an unlimited number of online resource providers. Shibboleth leverages an institution's existing sign-on and directory system to authenticate users and then passes only relevant identity information to the provider. The system removes the need for universities to set up multiple passwords and accounts for each online resource. To date, Shibboleth has been deployed by thousands of research and education institution sites worldwide.

http://www.internet2.eduhttp://www.fastlane.nsf.gov