Federated Access Management

Federated Access Management describes a set of policies and rules for access to online resources that a group of organisations have agreed to share. These policies enable the members to establish trust and a shared understanding of language and/or terminology. An access management federation provides a structure and a legal framework that enables authentication and authorisation across different organisations.

Joining an access management federation

Each federation has its own procedures for joining, so you will need to ask the federation you want to join what their requirements are. Often, a formal letter of application must be sent on your organisation’s headed paper, and you will probably need to include this information: 

• nominate Eduserv as your outsourced identity provider (IdP), i.e. your users will be using the OpenAthens MD service to connect to services registered with that federation.
• send your EntityID with your federation application. This is the ID for your organisation within the federation. It isn’t seen by users and is usually your domain name with the 'https://' prefix, e.g. https://idp.example.org/shibboleth. There is also a function in the Athens administration interface that lets you register the same information with Eduserv. This will ensure that all your users pass the correct EntityID to service providers in that federation.
  

OpenAthens products and services are used in an increasing number of federations across the world. These are currently known to include:

1. eduID.cz (Czech federation)
2. GakuNin (Japan)
3. DFN-AAI (Germany)
4. RENATER (France)
5. SWITCHaai (Switzerland)
6. UK Access Management Federation (United Kingdom)

If you have questions about joining any access management federation through OpenAthens email us at athenshelp@eduserv.org.uk.