Question 1

My product has a mobile app – can OpenAthens be used there?

Accepted Answer

Yes – OpenAthens products for content providers uses OpenID Connect, a lightweight technology used by PayPal and Google to handle secure single sign-on. This brings all the benefits of SAML to publishers without requiring content providers to implement it.

Question 2

We use IP recognition and/or organizational username/passwords to enable access – isn’t that enough?

Accepted Answer

IP recognition tools and organizational username/passwords are poor substitutes for federated access management. These access methods are inherently insecure and can’t provide users with personalization features. To enable personalization, users would need to create a personal account with each publishing platform they want to access which creates another barrier to usage. It’s also more difficult to identify misuse or provide any kind of meaningful statistics as IP only recognizes the organization, not individual users.

Question 3

What is an access management federation?

Accepted Answer

An access management federation provides:

1. A technical framework where service providers (publishers) and identity providers (organizations) agree to exchange encrypted user attribute data.
2. A trust authority that gives service providers appropriate assurances that a user passing their unique organizational ID can be considered a valid and current member of that organization

Question 4

What personalization options are available?

Accepted Answer

OpenAthens uses SAML attributes to ascertain what content users are entitled to access. The ‘eduPersonTargetedID’ attribute can be used for personalization features that are based on values specific to each service provider.

Question 5

We have a single subscription record for a customer, but OpenAthens says the customer consists of multiple organizations. Why is this?

Accepted Answer

Our clients decide how they are represented in the OpenAthens service. Some customers are represented as consortium-type organizations because each of the constituent parts has its own subscriptions. Content providers need to be able to distinguish between users from different entities within a consortium so the appropriate entitlements can be authorized. This also helps your customers adhere to their license conditions.

FAQ

How can we help?

My product has a mobile app – can OpenAthens be used there?

We use IP recognition and/or organizational username/passwords to enable access – isn’t that enough?

What is an access management federation?

What personalization options are available?

We have a single subscription record for a customer, but OpenAthens says the customer consists of multiple organizations. Why is this?

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