The UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research enables secure access to external services using the same username and password as for local services at your institution. This facility is not available at every institution so you should only choose to login or register … via the UK federation when it is locally recommended.
The federation uses the standards-based Shibboleth software, a distributed web-based authentication and authorisation solution which has been developed as part of the Internet2 initiative in the academic community. It is already in operation in a number of locations and is being adopted in order to provide improved authentication and authorisation services for the JVCS booking service. Follow the link for more information about how it works.
Both the Login and Registration procedures have been modified to exploit the benefits of Shibboleth but, for those who prefer, the old procedures will continue to exist side by side with the new.
The essential purpose of Shibboleth is to identify you, as a bona fide user recognised as such by you home organisation, and to furnish you with credentials which identify and characterise you. These credentials are carried in a web browser cookie which, while they endure, will be presented automatically to Shibboleth protected services in order to identify you. Access to such services will be permitted (or denied) without the requirement for any further user dialog.
To enable the JVCS Booking Service to exploit Shibboleth, it is required that certain attributes be release by participating Identity providers. The attributes help page describes those attributes currently used by the booking service.