1. Supporting further and higher education Current A&A Developments in the UK Alan Robiette, JISC Development Group

2. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm2 Overview The JISC community The Athens service and Athens developments Additional and longer term development projects

3. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm3 The JISC community JISC strategy is constrained by two factors –Large and varied community 180 higher education sites 500 further education colleges Potentially ~ 6 million staff & students –An existing access management system The Athens service

4. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm4 What is Athens? A system developed over several years to manage access to UK national data services Originally designed by a team at the University of Bath (JISC-funded) Now owned, developed and operated by EduServ (http://www.eduserv.org.uk) Besides JISC, Athens is also used similarly by the National Health Service (National Electronic Library for Health)

5. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm5 Some recent statistics These cover both education and NHS, unless otherwise stated 497 FE + HE sites; 769 sites total including NHS Approximately 2 million user accounts Average authenticated access requests per day 85,650 (August 2002) 51 content providers, offering between them 249 Athens-controlled resources

6. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm6 How does it work? Originally a “trusted third party” network service Essentially a large database of user ID and authorisation data Replicated to provide a resilient service Each participating college or university administers its own part of the database Content providers refer access requests to Athens for validation, and run special plug-in software to achieve this

7. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm7 Athens data flows © EduServ, 2002

8. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm8 Service providers Need to run special software to carry out the dialogue with Athens Athens “agent” plug-ins provided either as toolkit (C, Java, Perl implementations all available) for integration into supplier’s system –Important for many commercial publishers with complex front ends to multiple products Or as pre-packaged modules (Apache or IIS)

9. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm9 Athens developments “Single sign-on” introduced in early 2002 Limited-life ticket created at initial sign- on, allows access to all service providers running latest software plug-in Devolution of authentication back to user’s campus Initially via campus LDAP directory Also prototype using client-side X.509 certificate

10. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm10 Devolved authentication © EduServ, 2002

11. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm11 Latest announcements Earlier this month EduServ announced their intention to add Shibboleth compliance to Athens Allowing sites in an Athens community to access Shibboleth-protected resources Target date 1 st quarter 2003 Cf http://www.athensams.net/development

12. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm12 Additional development Programme of development projects undertaken beginning October/November 2002 –Jointly sponsored by two of the JISC functional sub-committees Research Support Committee Information Environment Committee

13. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm13 Principal objectives To explore in depth authentication via client-side X.509 certificates Certificates are coming whether we like it or not (Grid, NHS, e-Government) What are the issues involved in using them in a university/college context? To examine emerging solutions for authorisation Is a common solution achievable, e.g. for electronic information and Grid?

14. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm14 Basic data 11 projects funded (out of 22 received) 4 mainly to do with authentication 4 mainly to do with authorisation 3 miscellaneous (see later) Project durations 6 to 24 months Committees considering commissioning some further studies to fill gaps

15. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm15 Authentication projects Three looking at embedding certificate use in institutions London School of Economics University of Oxford (+ partners) University of Edinburgh –Edinburgh proposal also includes University of Paisley and two FE colleges One project to develop tools for certificate management University of Leeds

16. 25 Nov 2002TF-AACE, Stockholm16 Authorisation projects University of London PAPI (ULL, UL External Programme) Manchester Computing/ESNW Akenti (Zetoc) University of Salford Akenti and Permis (architectures) University of Warwick Roles and institutional memberships –Includes North Warwickshire College and Warwick-Leicester Medical School

17. Supporting further and higher education Questions?