A White Paper on Authentication and Access Management Issues in Cross-organizational Use of Networked Information Resources
Clifford A. Lynch · 2014
About this paper A first draft of this paper was released for review by members of the CNI Access Management list on March 28, 1998 and generated a great deal of electronic discussion within the closed CNI-AUTHENTICATE mailing list. This was followed by a meeting in Washington DC on April 5, 1998 to review and discuss the draft paper and comments generated on the list up to that date. The revision has also benefited from discussions at a Digital Library Federation/National Science Foundation Workshop held in Washington on April 6, 1998 on closely related issues. My thanks to all who contributed. This version, which incorporates many of the ideas from this process, is being prepared for distribution at the Spring CNI Task Force meeting in Washington DC, April 14-15; it is also being placed on the CNI website (www.cni.org) for wider dissemination. Note that in some places time did not permit me to fully incorporate earlier comments or to research questions that were identified, and I have tried to indicate where changes will be made prior to the preparation of the final version. The paper also still needs some considerable editorial work, and I ask readers to be forgiving of editorial problems. Comments are invited and should be sent to [email protected]. About 10 May, 1998, I will prepare a final version of the white paper which will be placed on the CNI website. 1.0 Introduction As institutions implement networked information strategies which call for sharing and licensing access to information resources in the networked environment, authentication and access management have emerged as major issues which threaten to impede progress. While considerable work has been done over the last two decades on authentication within institutions and, more recently, in support of consumer-oriented electronic commerce on the internet, a series of new technical and policy issues emerge in the cross-organizational authentication and access management context. This white paper, which is being prepared by the Coalition for Networked Information in conjunction with a large group of volunteer reviewers and contributors, is intended to serve several purposes: • To identify and scope the new issues that emerge in the crossorganizational setting and to provide a framework for analysing them.