What is InCommon?

The University at Albany is a participating member of the InCommon Federation . It is a quickly evolving organization of more than 500 members that serves an education and research community of more than 6 million users nationwide. The University at Albany’s membership allows its students, faculty and staff access to password protected resources offered by other participating members.

The InCommon Federation enables participants, such as the University at Albany, to make appropriate decisions for their organization about the release of identity information. Membership is open to accredited two and four year degree granting academic institutions, their sponsored partners and research entities.
InCommon allows users to use their own local campus authentication and identity attributes to access services of other participating InCommon members, without having to create a new account and password. In some cases, with the use of InCommon, personally identifiable information no longer needs to be shared.

The University at Albany faculty, staff and students can access federated online services by visiting a member’s Web site, selecting “University at Albany, SUNY” from a drop down menu, and logging in to our own Log On page using their campus credential (NetID and password). Shibboleth, which provides single sign-on, allows each federation participant to act as an identity credential provider for its own users, while also trusting the user authentication process of other member institutions when granting access to any services it chooses to offer.

In the near future, InCommon will be used to provide access to the National Student Clearinghouse, CampusLabs, the National Institute of Health (NIH) and others.