HUIT's fifth annual IT Summit — itself an opportunity for information technology staff from across the Harvard Community to collaborate on important topics on Harvard's IT radar — proved to be the ideal venue for the Identity & Access Management (IAM) team to showcase their efforts in helping Harvard faculty, students, staff, and researchers more effectively collaborate both within and outside of the University.

The team's presentation, "Enabling Cross-University Collaboration," examined IAM's deployment of an identity provider that enables users to easily gain secure access to research and learning materials across the American higher education community as a Bronze-certified provider in Internet2's InCommon Federation — a pool of 8 million participants across 470 universities and 33 government/nonprofit agencies. Presenters Scott Bradner (HUIT Senior Technology Consultant), Jane Hill (Director, IAM Product Management), and Jason Snyder (Managing Director, Architecture and Engineering) also described Harvard's participation in other cutting-edge collaboration efforts in higher education, including the Grouper enterprise access management system and the Trust and Identity in Education and Research (TIER) initiative, devoted to growing the ecosystem of federated identity in higher ed. Finally, the team updated attendees on the latest developments leading up to this fall's rollout of the HarvardKey unified credential, a single login name and password — backed by two-step verification — that enables access to email, desktop, and Web resources.

"With our certification earlier this year as an InCommon Bronze identity provider validating our security and processes, we've already made great strides at Harvard to make it easier for our faculty, students, and researchers to collaborate with other areas of Harvard as well as institutions worldwide," says Bradner. "As we approach the rollout of HarvardKey and two-step verification this fall, we at IAM are excited to see the fruits of our labors in action across the Harvard Community. We're looking forward to seeing how both our user-facing and behind-the-scenes solutions can further collaboration within and outside of Harvard — as well as inform the development of IAM solutions across higher education through Internet2's TIER initiative."

The IAM team's presentation was one of a day of panel discussions, educational sessions, and topical presentations at this year's IT Summit, held June 4 in Memorial Hall and other locations on the main Harvard campus. Opened with remarks from Vice President and University CIO Anne Marguiles and bookended by keynotes from Tufts University president emeritus Lawrence Bacow and Harvard Business School senior associate dean Frances Frei, the summit offered IT staff across the University a wealth of opportunities to explore both top-of-mind and up-and-coming issues.

You can view the IAM team's presentation from the IT Summit here, or learn more about the Summit itself on its website.

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