Athens – integrated AMS services Ed Zedlewski JISC/CNI Conference Edinburgh, June 2002

Outline Athens the present Key new developments Athens going forward

Where are we now? Nationwide AMS managed services for: –UK Higher/Further education sector run under SLA/contract to JISC 1.8m+ accounts in 460+ institutions, using 240+ resources –UK Health sector ~200 trusts Centrally managed infrastructure for: –DSP/publisher relations –Institutional support services –Policy issues increasingly important Increasingly devolved capability Shared authorisation space and User Profiling

Single Sign On (SSO) Full production SSO service rolled out Session credentials stored in cookie Session maintained at the AP Already in widespread use Full deployment anticipated by end 2002

Common platform 4 years of 100% authentication service uptime Ongoing development using core components of original Athens Gradual upgrade of interfaces and services Driving towards full standards compliance Users want evolution, rather than revolution Athens serves a need and it WORKS!

Athens DA Built on SSO infrastructure Works with existing DSP plug-in (responder) Devolved authentication service –Locally defined authentication schema –User authenticated locally –User ID bound to permission set ID at UAS –Presents pseudonym (virtual account) as credentials

Work in progress Pilot with University of Ulster VLE integrated with Athens DA –all students, all courses –WebCT, iPlanet, LDAP Directory, Library OPAC –study notes, discussion forums, reading lists –Initial sign can be through campus portal or via DSP

DA architecture

Role administration

Permission set definition

New usability features Expect to be able to gather useful behavioural statistics –Average No. of different DSP connections per user –Institutions can monitor take-up & usage patterns Data up/downloading facilities Security – reduce possible abuse Enhanced admin facilities for DSP’s

X.509 certificates Working demonstrator using X.509 certificates Built on SSO and DA services Retains user anonymity

InstitutionAthens Institution PersonnelStudent Registry Library SystemLocal Computing Athens Agent User Athens-protected Service (DSP) Athens Authentication Point Athens Single Sign On

InstitutionAthens Institution PersonnelStudent Registry Library SystemLocal Computing Directory Service Athens Agent User Athens-protected Service (DSP) Athens Authentication Point Athens Devolved Authentication (DA)

InstitutionAthens Institution PersonnelStudent Registry Library SystemLocal Computing Athens Agent Certificate Authority C Directory Service User Athens-protected Service (DSP) Athens Authentication Point AthensDA with Certificates

Future development & goals Facilitate integrated local information environments Wider deployment of DA services Exposure against other LDAP flavours Transition core technology to open standards –SOAP server (XML, SSL, JDBC, SOAP) –Publish the DSP API – DIY or use Athens plug- ins

Summary Acknowledge work done at Shibboleth, PAPI & JISC New developments delivered on a resilient platform Flexibility for institutions to evolve integrated SSO services Increased deployment of DA services Move towards open standards

Technology is easy….. …..people are hard

Contacts