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New Program Aims to Accelerate Alignment Efforts in Identity and Access Management for Research and Education Community
[October 18, 2017]

New Program Aims to Accelerate Alignment Efforts in Identity and Access Management for Research and Education Community


Internet2 announced today ten universities selected to participate in the year-long Trust and Identity in Education and Research (TIER) Campus Success Program that will provide guidance for institutions across the U.S. looking to implement identity and access management (IAM) solutions for their campuses. Modeled after two previous successful middleware adoption programs that Internet2 organized under National Science Foundation grants, the new program will focus adoption efforts on key shared areas of interest identified by the research and education (R&E) community.

The participating institutions are:

  • Colorado School of Mines
  • Colorado State University
  • Georgia Tech
  • Lafayette College
  • Oregon State University
  • Rice University
  • University of California, Merced
  • University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign
  • University of Maryland Baltimore County
  • University of Michigan



"The R&E community has been developing solutions to help address these challenges for over a decade, and the TIER program extends those efforts by creating a community-defined set of practices to ensure a common approach to providing access to resources," said Kevin Morooney, VP of trust and identity, Internet2.

The TIER program is supported by 49 investing institutions and grew out of campus discussions and the desire to align efforts to form an open-source, community-developed IAM suite, with coordinated campus practices to improve interoperability. It aims to simplify campus processes and advance inter-institutional collaboration and research.


The TIER software components include containerized versions of Shibboleth for single sign-on, Grouper for access management and group provisioning, and COmanage/MidPoint as a provisioning hub and entity registry. There are six community working groups chaired by campus representatives from the investing institutions that provide guidance on building IAM infrastructure and processes that accord with the TIER model.

About Internet2

Internet2 is a non-profit, member-driven advanced technology community. Internet2 delivers a diverse portfolio of technology solutions that leverages the strengths of its members and helps support their educational, research and community service missions. Internet2's research and education network infrastructure supports millions of user applications each day and delivers advanced, customized services that are accessed and secured by a community-developed trust and identity framework.


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