Workshops: Proposal for Planning and Implementing a Higher Education Bridge Certification Authority (HEBCA)

Educause, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

The research and education community faces a pressing need for trusted electronic communications between institutions of higher education and the federal agencies. The only general solutions to this problem are based on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), a system that uses digital certificates and signatures to bring to network communications the levels of trust and security required by the applications. A major barrier to the implementation of PKI among institutions is the fact that versions of the technology implemented by different vendors or certified by different vendors or certified by different authorities may not interoperate, effectively limiting their use to single institutions. A widely-accepted solution to this problem has been designed and implemented in the Federal Bridge Certification Authority (FBCA), which provides the legal, policy and technical framework to translate levels of trust from one institution or agency to another. In 2001-2002, EDUCAUSE implemented a test version of the Higher Education Bridge Certification Authority (HEBCA), which extends this approach to the Higher Education Community. While the test version demonstrated the technical feasibility of the approach, it cannot be used for production because it lacks the corresponding legal, policy and financial framework. Assuming the success of the design efforts, EDUCAUSE intends to use the results of the workshops as a roadmap to implement a production HEBCA, cross certify it with the FBCA, and invite Certificate Authorities that serve higher education to join the HEBCA. This will provide a uniform foundation on which universities can initiate a wide range of trusted electronic communications with various federal agencies to better support research and education. The proposal will develop and conduct a series of expert workshops to plan and implement the steps required to establish and create the HEBCA, and to move it into production.