InCommon for Energy Labs, Tech Centers and User Facilities

• InCommon Participation Agreement (specifically for energy labs, tech centers, user facilities)
• InCommon Fee Schedule

Energy Labs, Tech Centers and User Facilities can now join InCommon as identity providers and/or service providers, taking advantage of federated identity management to provide access to shared service, virtual organizations, and other scientific collaborations.

Question about eligibility?

• List of energy labs and tech centers
• List of energy-related user facilities

This program is supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet).

What is InCommon?

InCommon provides a secure and privacy-protecting way for your researchers and staff to access protected online resources from any other organization in the InCommon Federation. They enjoy single sign-on convenience with their existing credentials at your organization - no more creating accounts for each resource.

This means that your research organization continues to maintain your credentials directory and you decide which information is provided to your resource providers, including corporate partners, other research organizations, and universities.

Through the use of Shibboleth or another SAML-compliant software, you exchange attributes with your partners, providing only the information necessary to do the authentication and authorization.

InCommon provides the policy and technical framework that makes all of this possible.

Why InCommon?

Cost Savings

• Significantly reduced help desk calls
• Eliminate custom integration work with partners
• Adding new partners is a snap

Standard Practices

• Policy is standard throughout the federation
• Technology is standard throughout the federation, centered on SAML
• Well-defined attributes make interaction consistent with all other participants
• Integration work with new partners is greatly reduced

Security and Privacy

• As an identity provider, you maintain the identity directory and control security and privacy
• Fewer data spills through the use of attributes
• You do the authentication; your resource provider does the authorization

Simplified Operations

• Policy and technology standards means federation scales!
• Adding a partner takes very little time
• Single sign-on provides a simplified user experience
• East of set-up saves time and money

Join InCommon

See the steps for joining InCommon making sure that you use the special agreement [DOC] developed for Energy Labs.