Call for Participation: The Multi-Factor Authentication Cohortium

The Internet2 Scalable Privacy Project (ScalePriv), funded with the recent National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) grant to Internet2, is seeking campuses to participate in the Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Cohortium*. Applications are open until April 26, 2013 (note the deadline extension).

The MFA Cohortium is a ScalePriv-supported group of institutions sharing their explorations, experiences, expertise, artifacts, and overall "journey" in learning about, planning for, and deploying multi-factor authentication for a variety of key use cases within each institution, as well as federated access to services. It will be a facilitated and focused 15-month effort to help you (as a participating institution) make real progress towards MFA deployments. It will enable your institution, and higher education more broadly, to answer the questions "where do we need MFA?," "how do we deploy it?," and "what will it cost and what is our ROI?." And it will be focused on the research and education (R&E) community, dealing with issues and use cases of particular concern within R&E such as integrating MFA into WebSSO, sensitive data, cloud services, distance learners, bring-your-own-device, and the return on investment (ROI) within the R&E environment.

Important highlights:

• Will provide your institution broader access to expertise, resources, and collaborators to help you accomplish your MFA goals.
• Enable a significant advancement in the deployment of Multi-factor Authentication across Higher Education.
• Combining MFA with federation can multiply the impact and reach of MFA to inter- institutional, shared resource, and cloud service environments.
• A key effort within the Internet2 Scalable Privacy Project.
• 15-month facilitated collaborative effort beginning in April 2013 and ending in June 2014.
• Number of institutions accepted for participation in the Cohortium may need to be restricted, depending on response, to ensure value and effective collaboration for the member institutions.

The full Call for Participation includes a much richer explanation of the goals of the MFA Cohortium, more detailed information on what it will do and how it will operate, the expectations for institutions participating, and what information is needed in your "application to join".

One option for applying will be to use the web-based application form.

Remember, the closing date for applications is April 26, 2013. Questions may be sent to: cohortium-reg@internet2.edu .

*Cohortium: "Group of institutions sharing their explorations, experiences, expertise, artifacts, and overall journey," in this case of planning for and deploying multi-factor authentication.