What are the reasons for moving from Athens to federated access management?
The Athens service will not cease, so you are welcome to continue using it (see below). However, there are a number of advantages for institutions and users in adopting a federated access management system based on Shibboleth technology, in particular the evolving needs of e-learning and e-research communities for a single access management systems that supports a range of authentication scenarios, including access to internal resources, external resources and collaborative requirements. Continued use of Athens will only allow access to external, third-party resources. In addition, while the UK has been using Athens, other countries have been developing their own solutions to the problem of accessing multiple resources with a single identity. Shibboleth, which is a product of the US’s Internet2 initiative, has emerged as the frontrunner for the most widely-adopted standards-based approach. Shibboleth also separates authentication from authorisation. Authentication is controlled by the
