Net-people and CSS-DEV subscribers: As discussed at last Thursday's net-people meeting, we are beginning the process of phasing out the Central Authentication Hub (a/k/a CAH or "Internet Login") web authentication service in favor of the newer, standards-based Shibboleth service. This week, we will be sending email to contacts for applications using CAH requesting information on the languages, platforms, and packages that they are using to implement CAH authentication. We will use this information in developing the timelines for retiring CAH and for anticipating and focusing needs for transition support. We strongly encourage everyone who is responsible for a CAH-protected service to watch for these emails and to respond to them. If you expected to get one but still haven't by the end of Thursday, June 17, then please contact us at [log in to unmask] with a list of your servers and/or modules that you expected to hear about, and we'll try to track down where it was sent. We have created a site on UMWiki as a place to collect information about the Shibboleth service: https://wiki.umn.edu/view/ShibAuth/WebHome We have seeded the site with some links to Shib and SAML, as well as a few other bits of information that might be useful. We will continue to add more content to the wiki over time, and encourage everyone to participate in updating it with information you think others would find useful. One advantage that Shib has over CAH is that it is based on the SAML standard. Thus, there are several commercial and open-source implementations, toolkits, and app plugins that you can use to Shibbolize your application. The wiki is a great place to share links to this software. The timeline for retiring CAH has not been finalized yet. It will probably be at least a year before the plug is pulled, but now is the time to learn about Shib/SAML and start thinking about application conversion. Also, new applications should be set up to use Shib instead of CAH, to avoid having to convert them later. So please keep an eye out for our information request email, and send questions to us at [log in to unmask] If you feel they might be of interest to the broader community, feel free to reply here. Either way, we will try to incorporate answers into the wiki as appropriate. Future announcements regarding this change will be sent to these lists (net-people and CSS-DEV), and perhaps other places. -- %% Christopher A. Bongaarts %% [log in to unmask] %% %% OIT - Identity Management %% http://umn.edu/~cab %% %% University of Minnesota %% +1 (612) 625-1809 %%