By Jennifer Kim, Cyberinfrastructure Engineer for the MS-CC
Over the summer of 2024, the Minority Serving – Cyberinfrastructure Consortium launched its inaugural Identity and Access Management (IAM) Fundamentals Workshop, which focused on multilateral federation.
This virtual, two-part workshop covered important components of IAM systems — a key part of information security and cyberinfrastructure.
The workshop was developed in response to the growing interest within the MS-CC community to explore secure access to services for interested faculty, staff, and students. It also served as a starting point to learn key considerations when implementing single sign-on at an institution, as well as discovering access to academic resources and research tools worldwide.
Together, workshop leaders and attendees explored the question, “What exactly is federation?”
In collaboration with Cirrus Identity and InCommon, MS-CC offered the workshop at no cost to participants from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs).
Participants entered the training with varying goals, including gaining a better understanding of IAM vocabulary and federation pathways, as well as learning about real-life use cases and potential next steps.
Further tailored workshop content, based on the current environments of participating institutions, equipped participants with the tools necessary to confidently navigate the next steps of their institutions’ IAM development.
“With IAM and federated identity becoming a greater interest in the TCU community, the American Indian Higher
Education Consortium (AIHEC) was pleased that the MS-CC provided this timely training to introduce the topic
and lay the groundwork fundamentals for TCU IT staff.”
– Alex Grandon, cyberinfrastructure
coordinator with the AIHEC
TRIBAL COLLEGES IMPLEMENT FEDERATION ON CAMPUS
One participating institution at the workshop, Salish Kootenai College, had a specific goal of easing manual IAM processes regarding Jupyter Notebook utilization for their campus.
The institution’s instance of Jupyter Notebook, hosted by the OSG Consortium, leverages CILogon, which combines federated identity management with collaborative organization management. Using federated identity would allow Salish Kootenai College persons to access the application with organizational identities and avoid the overhead of additional accounting and credentials.
The team at Salish Kootenai College was able to take advantage of the workshop to deepen their understanding of both federation and IAM principles while continuing to explore how their federated identity can be leveraged.
“The course was intense, but the presenters did an excellent job of providing a lot of detailed information that allowed me to gain a much better understanding of the overall setup, from connection to implementation to potential use and benefits of the InCommon Federation and Cirrus Bridge.”
– Stacie Pretty On Top, operations manager of Salish Kootenai College
Salish Kootenai College was the first workshop-participating institution to join the InCommon Federation and implement the Cirrus Identity SAML Bridge — one of the potential IAM pathways institutions can pursue.
Following the summer workshop, several other TCUs proceeded with the InCommon Federation and Cirrus Bridge implementation pathway in support of trusted collaboration and account management among institutions.
The TCU institutions that have completed implementations to date include Sitting Bull College, United Tribes Technical College, and Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College. The implementation of InCommon Federation and Cirrus Bridge at Turtle Mountain Community College is currently in progress.
Matthew McCowan, a system administrator at Cankdeska Cikana Community College and workshop participant, said the materials provided a baseline of knowledge in IAM topics — a growing area of interest for his institution.
“The training provided a clear understanding of the basic mechanisms and requirements of InCommon and identity management in general.”
Other participants stated the workshop prepared them to attend BaseCAMP, the weeklong entryway into InCommon Federation and IAM fundamentals, as a potential next step in their IAM learning journey.
MORE MS-CC WORKSHOPS ON THE HORIZON
Altogether, the workshop drew 27 attendees from 13 total HBCUs and TCUs. The represented institutions included Alcorn State University, AIHEC, Bay Mills Community College, Cankdeska Cikana Community College, Claflin University, College of Menominee Nation, Fisk University, Jackson State University, Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University, Little Priest Tribal College, Prairie View A&M University, Salish Kootenai College, and Turtle Mountain Community College.
The collection of HBCUs and TCUs was itself an educational benefit throughout the workshop. Participants were able to talk to and learn from other institutions about common issues they are facing, as well as potential solutions.
“The training provided me the opportunity to gain knowledge on how other universities provided safe
technology measures for their end-users.”
As part of its mission, MS-CC hosts workshops to support the delivery of critical cyberinfrastructure learning content to HBCUs and TCUs nationwide. In 2024, MS-CC hosted seven workshops, both in-person and virtually, and additional workshops are currently in development for 2025. Check out the MS-CC events calendar to view all of our upcoming virtual and in-person events.
Are you interested in participating in a future workshop to hone your individual IAM skills or to help find solutions for your institutional needs? Reach out to Jennifer Kim, a cyberinfrastructure engineer with MS-CC, at jkim@internet2.edu to see what training opportunities are available.
