Institutions continue to be faced with a seemingly exponential proliferation of electronic resources (both from within the institution and from third-party producers and publishers). The principal challenge remains the facilitation of access to what has been termed "appropriate and permitted content for a broad range of users". To this end, the post-portal concept of a Managed Information & Knowledge Environment (MIKE) has been advanced. This specifically addresses the core issues of "identifying information content" and "developing suitable middleware for managing access".
It is with the second of these issues that the SECURe Project has been particularly concerned. The project, undertaken at the London School of Economics, was funded by the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to define a scalable and portable solution for single sign-on authentication and authorisation. (Authentication is used to verify the identity of a user; authorisation to determine what resources that user is entitled to access.) Thus an immediate benefit for the user is that they are not required to respond to multiple, resource- or service-specific username/password challenges.
The solution adopted by the SECURe Project Team is based on Shibboleth technology. That solution is elaborated in the documentation provided by this web site, which will enable your institution to identify the procedures necessary to securely share resources and securely obtain shared resources.
To successfully use the SECURe Documentation, you are strongly advised to undertake the evaluation process that allows you to specify your particular operational circumstances. This is provided by the pivotal Evaluating Your Needs page, to which you will be prompted to return until such time as you have completed the sequential process.
Once you have determined your needs, you may wish to use the Documentation Directory page, which offers Adobe PDF and Microsoft Word versions of the documents.
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Copyright © SECURe Project Team, 2004
Document last updated: 29/07/04