CAMP Shibboleth: Enabling Campus and Federated Single Sign-On

Unsure about what the Shibboleth System is about and how it can be used in production on your campus? Looking for a Web single sign-on package that can be used both for local applications and in federated environments?

Internet2's Shibboleth is being deployed nationally and internationally to solve real-world problems associated with intra- and interinstitutional authentication and authorization. For Web-based access control, it leverages campus identity and access management infrastructures to authenticate individuals and then sends information about them to the resource site, enabling the resource provider to make an informed authorization decision.

Many consider the Shibboleth System to be federating software, which it is; however, more and more campuses are asking what value they get, if any, from deploying separate intra- and intercampus single sign-on systems. Increasingly, these campuses are deploying Shibboleth for both purposes. It’s a tool that enables Web authentication and provides authorization information for applications and services, independent of who's offering them.

This CAMP will offer concrete practice and real-world experience from institutions running Shibboleth in production for controlling access to both on and off-campus services. Featured in this workshop will be an Application Showcase where campuses and vendors will demonstrate the Shibboleth System in action.

Both IT management and technical staff will find sessions of interest on the program and guidance for running Shibboleth in production. Participants will:

• Learn about using the Shibboleth System as a campus Web initial sign-on package
• Discuss problem approaches with the software developers and learn about SAML 2.0, the mechanism that carries the identity information
• Know what questions to ask of your information/library vendors about SAML and Shibboleth System support
• Understand the management issues when running a Shibboleth-enabled learning management system
• Listen to practical advice for running the Shibboleth System on server clusters
• Learn strategies for managing identity and privilege information used by the Shibboleth System

This workshop will offer education and guidance to higher education IT managers, project managers, middleware architects, and systems analysts involved at a technical, management, or stakeholder level in supporting Web-based services. The sessions are focused on campuses interested in knowing more about how to further their existing identity management (IdM) to support both on and off-campus services. And as usual, attendees will leave with a CD of resources and tools to help them with their deployments.

Participants are encouraged to have a sound knowledge of IdM to learn the most from the sessions. Those interested in knowing more about IdM can review the Enterprise Directory and Authentication Implementation roadmaps.

A note to previous CAMP Shibboleth Workshop attendees: If you participated in the authentication workshop in June 2004, consider attending this meeting to learn about how your colleagues are using the software, next steps for the software development team, and tips for running the package in production.

CAMP is sponsored by the National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative-Enterprise and Desktop Integration Technologies (NMI-EDIT) Consortium: Internet2 and EDUCAUSE. Additional support was provided by the National Science Foundation OCI-0330626. For information about NMI-EDIT and participation in the NSF Middleware Initiative, see www.nmi-edit.org.