Identity and Access Management

New Term for POIs: Harvard Sponsored Role

September 8, 2022

Effective September 22, 2022, Harvard will replace the term “Person of Interest” (POI)—used to describe roles that grant individuals temporary access to the University’s digital and physical resources for administrative or scholarly purposes—with a new term, “Harvard Sponsored Role”.

What is changing?

To reflect the new Harvard Sponsored Role term, HUIT will be updating its systems, trainings, and documentation, including:  

  • The...
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Grouper 2.6 Upgrade Completed

May 22, 2022
IAM is pleased to announce the release of Grouper 2.6 on May 22, 2022, a significant upgrade from the prior 2.4 version. The upgrade delivers the following benefits along with minor UI enhancements. See the attached Grouper 2.6 Release Notes for more details.
  • Improved system performance
  • Allows for authorization using combined HarvardKey Light (HKL) and HarvardKey (HUID-holding) identities
  • Introduces more reliable provisioning to Harvard-LDAP, HLS-LDAP and University-AD
  • Uses container deployments to deliver updates more...
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POI Policy Updates

August 9, 2021

After rollout of the POI Policy and Portal last month we received a number of policy questions and requests for exceptions. This feedback was brought to the POI Policy Working Group and several revisions were made to the policy that go into effect today.  We’ve summarized these changes below.

1) Reinstitute the Visitor role to support COVID testing
The Visitor role has been reinstated to support...

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Wiki uses Groups

Wiki leverages Group Services

January 19, 2018

Harvard Wiki has integrated with Group Services which enables wiki administrators to apply site permissions to groups of people. This replaces the prior use of iSties groups. As of January 10, 2018, IAM Group Services is live in the wiki and iSites groups are no longer in use. This milestone is the result of collaboration efforts...

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HarvardKey 3.0 Testing

HUIT rallies to test the HarvardKey 3.0 functionality

September 9, 2016

With just a few days notice, over 50 HUIT employees responded to a request to run through the functionality included in the HarvardKey 3.0 release in a testing session held on Friday, September 9th.  These testers help to refine the actual user experience of activating two-step verification within the HarvardKey self-service application and also to "load test" the new Duo API to ensure large volumes of people could be accommodated setting up two-step verification all at once.  Valuable feedback was collected by the Technology Office's UX team, who facilitated the session.  ...

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Class of 2020

Welcome Class of 2020!

August 24, 2016

For the first time in the history of Harvard College, every member of the incoming class had their login credential and email accounts provisioned before they even arrived on campus!  The Class of 2020 claimed their HarvardKeys upon receiving their admissions notices in the spring and used that to access my.harvard. Over the summer, HUIT staff worked with the FAS Registrar's Office to confirm that every freshman had their @college.harvard.edu email account created.  The Class of 2020 is going to be...

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2015: A Banner Debut Year for HarvardKey!

2015: A Banner Debut Year for HarvardKey!

December 17, 2015

2015 has been a sweeping year for Harvard University Information Technology (HUIT), particularly in the area of "technology renewal" — an extensive cross-team effort that brought changes including the new my.harvard portal from the Student Information System program, deployment of the Canvas platform by the Teaching and Learning Technologies program, and rollout of the new HarvardKey authentication system from the Identity & Access Management (IAM) program at HUIT.

A "single identity for life" spanning the Harvard Community, HarvardKey enables access to a wide range of...

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Cross-HUIT 'Flash Team' Readies Data for HarvardKey Launch

Cross-HUIT 'Flash Team' Readies Data for HarvardKey Launch

November 24, 2015

While the launch of the new HarvardKey authentication system this fall has meant highly visible front-end improvements for users, a significant portion of go-live efforts for HarvardKey involved extensive work aligning data and behind-the-scenes processes in order to ensure a seamless launch of the new system. To meet these needs before this fall's critical dates for launch — work that often involved detailed, individualized data remediation — HUIT staff from the Identity & Access Management (IAM) program and Unified Communications' Exchange and Google services came together in close...

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