Catalyst Program Brings Identity and Access Management Expertise, Support to InCommon Community

WASHINGTON, June 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Internet2 announced the launch of the InCommon Catalyst Program aimed at supporting higher education institutions, research organizations, and sponsored partners with enabling better security, access to services, and user experience through InCommon's integrated service and software solutions.

The program includes eight organizations specializing in a wide range of identity and access management (IAM) support services, and that understand the specific requirements of offering and accessing services across the research and higher education community. The inaugural eight InCommon Catalysts are:

• Alfa Jango
• CILogon
• Cirrus Identity
• Evolveum
• RDTC (Research Data and Communications Technologies)
• Spherical Cow Group
• Unicon
• West Arete

"The InCommon Catalysts bring a wealth of expertise and years of involvement as active collaborators alongside InCommon's higher education and research organization participants," says Ann West, associate vice president for trust and identity at Internet2. "We realize that institutions are at different stages of their identity and access management planning and implementation, and know there is a growing demand among institutions to simplify and scale their access to cloud and local services, as well as support global collaboration tools. " 

More than 1,000 institutions across the U.S – including colleges, universities, government and nonprofit laboratories, research centers, agencies, and industry partners – benefit from InCommon's secure, privacy-preserving trust fabric. This enables institutions to make appropriate decisions about the release of identity information and the control of access to protected online resources.

InCommon Catalysts as Community Partners
InCommon Catalysts are knowledgeable about the InCommon Federation and Trusted Access Platform, and are active participants in InCommon's conferences, training programs, and working groups.

Each InCommon Catalyst must meet a set of standard criteria in order to participate in the program, including demonstrating knowledge of InCommon community use cases, participating in the InCommon community, attending relevant community events, contributing case studies from relevant R&E organizations, and operating within established community guidelines.

All InCommon Catalysts are Internet2 members who contribute to the research and education's IAM community, and who work together to solve technology challenges and develop solutions that enable the academic mission.

Identity and Access Management Support
InCommon Catalysts can work with organizations needing further integration assistance with the InCommon Federation, including "federation adapter" options as recommended in the recently published Identity Provider as a Service Workgroup. InCommon Catalysts also provide broad support for the InCommon Trusted Access Platform applications, from architectural design, implementation, and operational support, including service hosting.

Recently, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued new guidelines and requirements for accessing their services through the InCommon Federation. This includes NIH resources often used by health science researchers to access data, such as the electronic Research Administration Portal, or eRA, which helps manage the receipt, processing, review, award and monitoring of approximately $34 billion in research and non-research grants awarded annually by NIH and other grantor agencies in support of the collective mission of improving human health. The NIH requirements is another example of how InCommon Catalysts can provide assistance to organizations needing help in supporting these requirements and meeting deadlines for accessing these services through the InCommon Federation.

Working with an InCommon Catalyst is a great complement to participation in the InCommon Academy training and Collaboration Success Program that are currently being offered with a focus on workforce development and upskilling.

Additional examples of projects that InCommon Catalysts support include integrating InCommon Trusted Access Platform components with an institution's existing IAM infrastructure; help for research, higher education and their industry partners joining InCommon Federation; expertise in designing IAM systems that are efficient and extensible; integrating IAM components or developing a purpose-built system; and advising on outsourcing IAM tasks or systems through hosted services.

Additional resources:

• View a complete list with contact information of InCommon Catalysts.
• View a list of InCommon IAM solutions specifically designed for research and higher education and their industry partners.
• Find out which Catalysts support the new NIH requirements.
• Learn more about the InCommon Academy training and Collaboration Success Program implementation support.

About InCommon
InCommon grew out of Internet2's work in trusted access to resources, which has been underway since 1998. In 2000, Internet2 received the first of what would become 10 federal agency awards, with Ken Klingenstein as principal investigator. The awards include nine from the National Science Foundation and one from the Department of Commerce. This led to the creation of the Internet2 Middleware Initiative, and both Shibboleth and InCommon grew out of that program early on.

InCommon provides integrated service and software solutions for research and education that include single sign-on, access to cloud and local services, and seamless global collaboration for students, faculty, staff, and researchers. InCommon also serves as the U.S. node for the eduroam roaming wi-fi service. For more information, visit www.incommon.org or follow @InCommonUS on Twitter.

About Internet2
Internet2® is a non-profit, member-driven advanced technology community founded by the nation's leading higher education institutions in 1996. Internet2 serves 320 U.S. universities, 59 government agencies, 45 regional and state education networks and through them supports more than 100,000 community anchor institutions, over 1,000 InCommon participants, and 54 leading corporations working with our community, and 70 national research and education network partners that represent more than 100 countries.

Internet2 delivers a diverse portfolio of technology solutions that leverages, integrates, and amplifies the strengths of its members and helps support their educational, research and community service missions. Internet2's core infrastructure components include the nation's largest and fastest research and education network that was built to deliver advanced, customized services that are accessed and secured by the community-developed trust and identity framework.

Internet2 offices are located in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Denver, Colo.; Washington, D.C.; and West Hartford, Conn. For more information, visit www.internet2.edu or follow @Internet2 on Twitter.

SOURCE Internet2

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