Kieran Loftus

1
Building a National Access Management
Infrastructure

• Kieran Loftus
• Director of Computer Services, NUI, Galway
• November 2007

2
Agenda

• What do we need and why?
• Benefits side effects
• Where we stand
• Next steps

3
What do we need?

• Sustainable World-Class Research
• Support for collaboration, mobility, resource
  sharing
• Effective, secure, simple
• Provide an attractive environment for research
• Flexible Teaching Learning
• Academic Mobility
• Collaborative programmes
• Student mobility between institutions
• Personal Mobility
• Work anywhere
• International effectiveness
• Research collaboration, Erasmus, non-EU students

4
Immediate drivers

• Access to licensed resources
• Publisher expectations wont be IP based
• Growth of shared resources (IREL, NDLR)
• Need a simple authentication solution
• Emergence of collaborative academic programmes
• Collaborations Cork, Galway, Limerick
• Registration issues
• Student mobility in Dublin
• Research expectations
• Multiple collaborations
• Rapid and flexible collaboration
• Protection of shared outputs
• International Marketplace developments
• Suppliers can offer solutions
• Shibboleth in UK, US, Mainland Europe

5
What does this mean in practice?
Home
Away
Access provided on the basis of data maintained
provided by home institution
Resource
Definitive Source of Identification Data
6
What does this mean in practice?

• Business rules to support collaboration
• Who can access resources?
• Who should control access?
• How can we trust and be trusted?
• What standards must procedures meet?
• Good Local Identity Access Management
• Based on good campus-wide procedures
• Needs to meet agreed (inter)national standards
• Need for an others database
• May all lead to significant local benefits
• Technical solution on a national scale
• International compatibility

7
Local Benefits of Local IAM

• Service improvements, Cost savings
• Eliminate Multiple id Databases
• Drive local process improvements
• Better management of joiners leavers
• Better tracking of others
• Library resource access
• IT Provisioning simplified sign-on
• Security Management
• Campus resource access

8
Towards a Sustainable Solution

• Two main ideas
• Option One Do what others have done
• Create an Irish Access Management Federation
• Is Shibboleth the only sensible option?
• Option Two One big national academic directory
• Ireland is smaller
• Most students are CAO registered
• The products can support it
• Could we possibly deliver it?

9
Solution Issues

• Federation
• Replicates working solutions elsewhere
• Needs central leadership (or strong coordination)
• Requires Local IAM Solutions
• Extensible internationally may not be easy
• Centralised solution
• May be appropriate to Irish scale
• Definitely requires shared central management
• How to deliver it?
• May relieve local resources
• Still need to provide international solution
• Potentially significant national benefits
• Potential political issues

10
Current Status

• eInis consortium, PRTLI funded
• SIF Cycle 2 Universities proposal
• Aim
• to make sure that users are given simple and
  secure access to the resources which they need
  from any location
• Assumptions
• Will extend to entire third level sector
• Central role of HEAnet
• Limited local deployments already

11
What should we do next?

• SIF Cycle 2 Outcome December 07
• Then (assuming funding available)
• Mobilise project partners
• Legal Governance Framework
• Architectural study decision
• Full project definition
• Pilots

12

• Thank You