New resource helps ed-tech leaders with identity management

As district ed-tech directors discover new ways to integrate technology in their schools, “federated identity management”—having a common set of policies, practices, and protocols in place to manage the identity of users, and which applications they have access to—has become a way for ed-tech leaders to streamline and juggle users’ access to different resources. A common way to do this is to provide single sign-on access for each user, meaning a single log-in would give users access to any resources they’re entitled to on the network. Now, a new primer from the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) aims to help ed-tech leaders understand single sign-on, its role in identity management, and its benefits and challenges. “Single Sign-On, Multiple Benefits: A Primer on K-12 Federated Identity and Access Management” examines the movement toward federated identity management in education. The primer is part of CoSN’s 2011 Compendium, and parts of it are available online free of charge. http://www.cosn.org/Default.aspx?TabId=8570 ^[1]