news from the ‘misty’ albion: shibboleth in the uk

3 May 05 Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

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PERSEUS:

Portal-enabled Resources via Shibbolized End-user Security

News from the ‘misty’ Albion: Shibboleth in the UK

Masha Garibyan

London School of Economics Library, England

(With grateful acknowledgement to Terry Morrow, JISC)


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Why the United Kingdom?

Total area – ‘slightly smaller’ than Oregon


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UK Activity

• UK development work funded by JISC– Joint Information Systems Committee– Government funded body – multimillion £ budget– Supports IT in UK post-16 education & research

• Works with international partners eg– Internet2 – Terena (Trans-European Research & Education

Networking Association) – International Middleware Meeting, Upper

Slaughter (England), Oct 2004, JISC-sponsored


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JISC

• Funding two major middleware initiatives – 3-year technology development

programme– 2-year infrastructure programme


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Technology Development

• 3 years (2004 – 2007)• $5.7m (£3m) of government funding• Funding 15 projects • Wide range of middleware activities:

– Development and evaluation of tools– Institutional deployment – Use of tools and policies

• Builds on earlier work also funded by JISC


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Infrastructure Programme

• 2 years (2004 – 2006)• $6m (£3.2m) of government funding• Establishing a UK Shibboleth infrastructure • Key work areas:

– Making national data centre services Shibboleth compliant– Funding for 16 universities willing to be early Shibboleth

adopters– Creating a dedicated support service for ‘early adopters’– Liaising with suppliers (publishers, subscription agents etc) – Establishing a national UK Shib federation


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Middleware Assisted Take-Up Service (MATU)

• Providing support to the JISC-funded early adopters• Scoping future requirements for institutions adopting

Shibboleth• Support services include:

– Comprehensive website– Documentation– Help desk– Onsite support– Training events– Links to and information about Shibboleth


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180 universities

500 FE colleges

Not bad for a country that is ‘slightly’ smaller than Oregon

So, in the future it might look like this…


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London School of Economics (LSE) Library


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LSE Library

• Part of the London School of Economics & Political Science

• Also known as the British Library of Political and Economic Science

• The largest library in the world devoted exclusively to the social sciences

• 11,000 registered external visitors (e.g. Bill Clinton) and (rich) alumni


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LSE Library projects

• Active participation in cutting edge information technology developments through internally and externally-funded projects (e.g. JISC)

• A track record of successful projects in access management (and other areas)

• LSE was the first institution in the UK to pilot the Shibboleth technology


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PERSEUS Project

• Portal-enabled Resources via Shibbolized End-user Security (PERSEUS) Project

• Part of the JISC Core Middleware: Technology Development Programme

• PERSEUS aims to:– provide Shibboleth-based access management to

information resources via an institutional portal (moving away from identity-based solutions)

– use LSE as a UK test bed for Shibboleth– while being actively involved in other projects…


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DART Project

• Digital Anthropology Resources for Teaching (DART) Project:- a collaboration between LSE and Columbia

University, jointly funded by JISC and the US National Science Foundation (2003 – 2008)

• DART aims to: – develop digital teaching resources for

undergraduate anthropology– investigate opportunities for flexible resource-

sharing between universities (using Shib)


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PERSEUS/ DART connection

• PERSEUS Team (with colleagues from Columbia) helped DART to facilitate Shibboleth-based resource-sharing between the two institutions

• So, – No resource duplication – Institutional IPR protection

• First ever use of Shibboleth to share teaching and library resources across continents


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It works like this…

• Columbia University has developed a digital resource in Anthropology which it is sharing with LSE

• An LSE user uses one of these routes to access the resource:– WebCT (LSE’s VLE)– Columbia University website


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User is redirected to WAYF


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User selects home institution


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Request is processed


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Success!

27-Apr-05 UKSG2005: Shibboleth Briefing 25

[demo5] user reaches secure resource


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ShibboLEAP

• JISC Infrastructure Programme: Early Adopters• Consortium of 6 London HE colleges, led by LSE• LEAP = London E-prints Access Project• Aims to create an authentication service for staff

involved in managing content (e.g. academics, librarians) that doesn’t require use of a (yet another) username/password ‘supplied’ by Eprints.org server

– Create a Shib IdP service at each college– Integrate the Eprints.org server making it a Shib target


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So what’s next?

• Shib can be used in many different ways

• JISC has recently announced its plans to adopt Shibboleth as the main standards-based architecture for access management in the communities it serves.

• So, watch the space!


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Some links

• www.jisc.ac.uk/programme_middleware.html• www.angel.ac.uk/PERSEUS/• www.columbia.edu/dlc/dart/• www.angel.ac.uk/ShibboLEAP/• www.matu.ac.uk


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Contact details

• [email protected]• +44 (0)20 7852 3509• www.angel.ac.uk/PERSEUS

Any questions?

news from the ‘misty’ albion: shibboleth in the uk

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