Identity and access management (IAM) allows different levels of access to resources in a system (such as a school district network) based on different user attributes. In other words, users’ identities—and the restrictions that IAM places on those identities—determine how much information the user is allowed to access within the system. Users’ access levels can be changed or upgraded as they change positions within a school district, or as a student moves up through grade levels.
The Internet2 Middleware Initiative notes that IAM helps K-12 districts simplify and secure access to services, encourages collaboration through pre-established group membership to certain tools or services, and makes operations transparent by providing a single point of management for consolidated log-ins and access.
An IAM system can streamline a process by asking every user to answer a set of questions, such as whether the person is who he or she claims to be, what is known about the user, and what the user is allowed to access or do.
For instance, through a single sign-on, a teacher can access an online gradebook and all of its features, whereas the IAM solution knows that students signing into the same server are limited to the records portion of the gradebook in a read-only mode, prohibiting them from making any changes.
Federated IAM
Building off this, federated IAM enhances basic IAM with “a sophisticated yet simple infrastructure for managing a person’s multiple log-ons to access local and remote resources.”
Federated IAM works when a group of organizations—in this case, schools—form a federation and agree to interoperate using a common set of rules. The organizations also will post their authentication policies so that others who might want to join the federation can evaluate the policies. The group uses a standard set of attributes for each user, such as user name and affiliation, to determine what resources the user can access.
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