Federated Access Management: Core Skills
This three day workshop, developed with JISC funding, focuses on the technical requirements for organisations joining the UK Access Management Federation and acting as their own Identity Provider (IdP).
The end of funding for Athens access after July 2008 is one of the factors driving colleges and universities to make a decision about how they access online resources. Federated access management - for both internal and external resources - offers a more secure, scalable and user friendly environment for organisations to manage and verify the online identity of their own members.
Participants will be able to use the technology for themselves and explore the core skills and practical steps required to deploy it within their organisation. Guest speakers at each event will also provide an opportunity to find how others are already working with federated access management.
Topics:
- The UK Access Management Federation - reviewing the road map
- Federated access management in action
- Server infrastructure - including Apache, Tomcat and Java
- Linux or Windows? - options for both platforms
- Secure authentication - SSL, certificates and https
- What are Shibboleth and SAML? - installation and configuration
- Authentication, authorisation, attributes and attribute release policies
- Who else to involve - why FAM is more than just a technical task
Who is it for?
The training has been developed for staff responsible for institutional access to online resources and/or the management of user authentication.
Technical staff will have the opportunity to see the systems working for real and explore the components that make them work. Non-systems staff will be able to gain an effective overview of the technical set-up required and how it fits in to an overall strategy for effective access management.
Ideally participants will need to be comfortable with basic administration of computer systems (installing software etc.) as well as having some general knowledge about internet networking and identity management principles.
By the end of the workshop participants will have:
- Reviewed the steps (technical and administrative) required to join the UK Access Management Federation
- Examined the position of the technical infrastructure as one part of an institutional strategy for access management
- Explored open source technologies for IdP deployment
- Seen a Shibboleth-based IdP in action
- Created XML files to configure access management systems
- Explored the authorisation process and the release of attributes
Scheduled workshops
No workshops scheduled at this time.
