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Shibboleth Version 1 Released
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Peter Suber
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Jul 02, 2003 17:18 PDT
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[Forwarding from CNI-Announce. --Peter.]
I wanted to share with CNI-announce readers the recent press release from
Internet 2 on progress with the Shibboleth distributed authentication
system. This is a very important infrastructure component which is now
developing real implementation momentum.
Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI
INTERNET2 RELEASES PRIVACY-PRESERVING WEB AUTHORIZATION SOFTWARE
Open source Shibboleth software developed and tested by more than 20
leading companies and universities
ANN ARBOR, MI -- Internet2 today announced the availability of Shibboleth
1.0, the first production version of software implementing a leading online
authorization architecture. Shibboleth, which is standards-based and open
source, incorporates active privacy management while enabling
inter-institutional sharing of Web resources subject to access controls.
Blackboard, WebCT and WebAssign, course management software providers, and
EBSCO, JSTOR and SFX, online information companies, have already begun to
incorporate Shibboleth technology into their products and
services. Shibboleth has been widely tested with over 20 leading
universities and research institutions participating in pilot
deployments. SWITCH, the Swiss national research and education networking
organization has selected Shibboleth as their official authentication and
authorization architecture and the National Science Digital Library (NSDL),
a major educational initiative by the National Science Foundation, will use
Shibboleth to allow access to customized or restricted content and services.
"Shibboleth has made cross-institutional course management, content
management, portfolio management systems and other home grown applications,
all accessible through integrated and seamless online teaching and learning
environments across the enterprise,"said Christopher Etesse, Senior
Director of Technology at Blackboard. "By combining Shibboleth with the
open architecture of the Blackboard Learning System, the academic community
has gained a tremendous solution for the next generation of online education."
"The availability of Shibboleth 1.0 is a major milestone in a long
road. The Coalition for Networked Information led much of the work
articulating the requirements for a system like Shibboleth some five years
ago; designing and building it has been a major effort that required the
best talent from the higher education community," said Dr. Clifford Lynch,
Executive Director for the Coalition for Networked Information. "We
continue to work with Internet2 and the broader community to validate and
widely deploy this essential and badly-needed infrastructure for
inter-organizational networked information applications. One of the first
applications will be managing access to content licensed by research
libraries on behalf of their campus communities. User privacy is a core
value of these libraries, and the adoption of Shibboleth in this area
emphasizes the extent to which Shibboleth's design fundamentally recognizes
and honors user privacy."
"We are excited by the increasing momentum and dedication of the
developers, as demonstrated by the release of Shibboleth 1.0," said David
Millman, Director of Research and Development at Academic Information
Systems, Columbia University and member of the National Science Digital
Library (NDSL) Core Integration Team. "NSDL has long been committed to the
Shibboleth technology because of its scalable, distributed architecture and
its privacy protections, both critical goals of the NSDL itself."
"JSTOR has been looking for a replacement to the current IP authentication
model in the academic community," said David Yakimischak, Chief Technology
Officer for JSTOR, an online resource of scholarly journals. "We see
Shibboleth as the best current alternative, for it provides simplicity,
scalability, extensibility, and the protection of privacy within an open,
standard architecture. Our early prototypes with Shibboleth have been
successful, and we anticipate ever increasing interest and demand from our
participating academic institutions."
Shibboleth emphasizes federated administration and access control based on
attributes rather than identity to provide a scalable and extensible
framework for inter-institutional authorization. The Shibboleth software
was developed under the auspices of the National Science Foundation's
Middleware Initiative (NMI).
Institutions currently involved in the pilot program include: Carnegie
Mellon University, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Georgetown
University, London School of Economics, New York University, Ohio State
University, Pennsylvania State, University of Colorado, University of
Michigan, University of Texas Health Center at Houston, University of
Washington, University of Wisconsin -- Madison, University of California
Office of the President, Blackboard Inc., EBSCO, JSTOR, OCLC, SFX,
WebAssign and WebCT.
Shibboleth is an Internet2 project designed to develop architectures,
policy structures, practical technologies and open source
implementations. Shibboleth 1.0 has been tested with the Apache Web server
on Red Hat Linux versions 7.2 and 7.3, and on Solaris 2.8, with Microsoft
Windows2000 versions for both Apache and IIS expected to be available
soon. For more information about the Internet2 Middleware Initiative and
Shibboleth, visit:
<http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/>http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/
About Blackboard Inc.
Blackboard Inc. was founded with a vision to transform the Internet into a
powerful environment for the education experience. Blackboard is a leading
provider of e-Education solutions serving the global needs of primary and
secondary schools, higher education, corporations and government
agencies. Blackboard is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices
and staff across North America, Europe and Asia. Visit
<http://www.blackboard.com/>www.blackboard.com for more information.
About Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
CNI is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise
of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly
communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. Some 200
institutions representing higher education, publishing, network and
telecommunications, information technology, and libraries and library
organizations make up CNI's Members. CNI is jointly sponsored by EDUCAUSE
and the Association of Research Libraries. For more information, visit
<http://www.cni.org/>www.cni.org.
About National Science Digital Library (NSDL)
NSDL is a digital library of exemplary resource collections and services,
organized in support of science education at all levels. Starting with a
partnership of NSDL-funded projects, NSDL is emerging as a center of
innovation in digital libraries as applied to education, and a community
center for groups focused on digital-library-enabled science
education. For more information, visit: www.nsdl.org.
About Internet2(R)
Led by over 200 U.S. universities, working with industry and government,
Internet2 is developing and deploying advanced network applications and
technologies for research and higher education, accelerating the creation
of tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 recreates the partnerships among
academia, industry and government that helped foster today's Internet in
its infancy. For more information, visit:
<http://www.internet2.edu/>www.internet2.edu.
# # #
CONTACT:
Michelle Pollak
Internet2
(202) 331-5345
mpol-@internet2.edu
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