This message has been posted to a number of lists, but is of ptentially
great importance to eLib projects. Apologies if you have received it more
than once. C
A new authentication/registration system for JISC National Services
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Over the last year there has been discussion between JISC, the national
data centres and user representatives on the standardisation of user
registration and authentication for national online services.
JISC is funding the development of the NISS/ATHENS authentication
system to respond to the needs of end-users and academic support
staff and to reflect the requirements of the national data centres. This
solution will be adopted for the next two years and is only one strand of
JISC activities in the authentication area. Further work is continuing on
finding long-term solutions for the wider needs of HE, possibly involving
commercial or global partners.
JISC is pleased to announce that ATHENS3 will be available from
September 1997 for use by the national data centres. The centres will
introduce user registration for a number of dataset services from this
time, administered through the ATHENS3 interface . The service will be
available for other services, and for local use, after January 1998.
Two sets of workshops are planned over the summer and further email
announcements of dates and venues will be made in the near future:
a) General Presentation - for all members of the community to be held
during July and August. This will include outline details, impact on sites
and future plans and also offer opportunities for discussion and
feedback.
b) Site Administrator and Technical Contacts Workshop - late Sept/Oct.
Will include details of how to implement hierarchic and devolved account
management, other V3 facilities and future plans.
Summary of features
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(Please note that the following is *not* a full description of the
current and future features of ATHENS/ATHENS3)
ATHENS3 will include
*'single sign-on' to multiple resources, i.e. a user needs to remember
only one ID and password to get access to a range of services;
* site control over the administration of user accounts and passwords
through a Web interface;
* devolved local management of user accounts, i.e. administration can be
shared among local staff, with delegated control of access rights.
* authentication for access to services via Telnet as well as WWW
* individual end-user accounts
* user controlled passwords
In order to provide a high degree of resilience and reliance, the ATHENS
registration server will be replicated at a number of UK sites.
More information about ATHENS is available from the NISS Web site, at
http://www.niss.ac.uk/authentication/
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Norman Wiseman Tel: +44(0)115 951 4799
JISC
University of Nottingham
NG7 2RD eMail: [log in to unmask]
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