technology watch doc 086
Title: |
Athens developments |
Subject: |
Authentication and Authorisation |
Author: |
Athens |
Format: |
html, pdf |
Location: |
http://www.athensams.net/development/ |
Abstract:
Athens has for many years offered single username/password access to multiple online services, however, the user is required to type in his username each time he logs in to a service. True Single Sign On, where the user is not challenged on login to a second or subsequent Athens service, has long been a missing element of the Athens distributed Access Management services. The user community has campaigned vociferously for the introduction of this feature. Single Sign On (SSO) is now available within the Athens infrastructure, and services offering SSO started to rollout from 12th February 2002. All current Athens service providers are being encouraged to integrate Athens SSO, and all new Athens implementations will be SSO compliant. For the current list of AthensSSO (Single Sign On) compliant services please refer to the 'AthensSSO services' page. This list also includes online services which will employ AthensSSO in the next two months.
Commentary:
Athens remains one of the key authentication systems with the UK education sector, and this document details plans for the future at Athens, including devolved authentication. This paper looks at both PAPI and Shibboleth (systems at the centre of Angel research and development) and provides both technical and practical details concerning implementation.