NMI Release 6.0 Now Available
released 12.16.04
Contact
Ann West
NMI-EDIT
awest@educause.edu
906.487.1726
WASHINGTON, DC —
The sixth release of the National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative (NMI) offers several new components relating to end-user authorization services.
Architected to integrate with academic and research software and infrastructures such as Grids, the release is available under open-source licenses to the public at http://www.nsf-middleware.org/. New and updated components in NMI-R6 include standards-based intra- and inter-institutional authentication and authorization components, frameworks, and related directory schema. Designed to address specific challenges in research and education security infrastructures, the release includes a rich variety of tools that enable researchers to work more efficiently.
"NMI-R6 represents the continued identity management work critical for the seamless and secure access to resources," said Kevin Thompson, NSF program director for NMI.
"It contains the introductory releases of privilege, authorization decision, and group management tools that fit together and provide ways to manage security and access in the complex research and education environments," added Ken Klingenstein, director of Middleware and Security for Internet2 and principal investigator of the NMI-EDIT project. "Researchers will be able to use their local credentials to access restricted resources supported by national and international virtual organizations."
Upcoming releases of NMI will feature components that enable the scalable integration of campus and Grid infrastructures and reduce the complexity in managing their daily academic, institutional, and research work.
The NMI-R6 release features NMI-EDIT's Signet: An Introduction, a set of privilege management tools that allows the delegated management of resource access privilege information that can then be provisioned to applications or directories. Also included in the release is Grouper, a set of group management tools that integrates with Signet or can be used independently. Also new for Release 6.0 is SPOCP, a language and software used for making authorization decisions. ompanion components include new schema of eduMember, which holds group-related information, and eduCourse, which is used to describe academic course information. The draft of the new Enterprise Implementation Authentication Framework, offering organizations assistance with implementing well-designed authentication infrastructure, is also included.
Other NMI-EDIT tools updated for NMI-R6 include Shibboleth, an inter-institutional authorization system; A-Select and Cosign, two Web initial-sign-on packages; PERMIS, an authorization package; eduPerson, the de facto standard directory schema for higher-education; H.350 Cookbook, documentation describing the use and implementation of the multimedia directory schema; and Pubcookie, a Web initial sign-on package.
