UMBC has become the third higher-education organization in the country to become certified for the Bronze Identity Assurance Profile under the InCommon Assurance Program.

InCommon developed the assurance program as part of its mission to provide secure and privacy-preserving trust services for its participants. Enabling higher-value, higher-risk services requires increased trust by the organizations that run the identity and cloud services.

“UMBC believes Identity management is absolutely essential to campus cyber security, and Bronze represents consensus best practice in identity management,” said Jack Suess, Vice President of Information Technology and CIO at UMBC. “It is in our interest to utilize these best practices in designing and implementing our identity management processes.”

InCommon currently has two US-Government approved assurance profiles — Bronze and Silver. Bronze is comparable to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Assurance 1 level, which has credential security adequate for basic Internet interactions. Silver, comparable to NIST’s level of Assurance 2, requires proof of identity and has security appropriate for higher-risk transactions.

At InCommon’s monthly IAM webinar series, Todd Haddaway, UMBC’s Director of Database and Identity Management, presented on the topic of UMBC’s experience with obtaining Bronze certification. The webinar can be viewed from the InCommon IAM Online webinar homepage. 

More information about the assurance program can be found at assurance.incommon.org.