About Shibboleth
Shibboleth is an authentication and authorisation infrastructure capable of granting individual learners with secure anywhere, anytime access to educational resources.
The term originates from an ancient Hebrew word containing a sound which only certain tribes could pronounce and was used to determine whether their potential enemy was friend or foe. Read more on Wikipedia.
In ICT terms it means that access can be granted to specific services in such a way that personal data does not pass across the internet thus protecting users. Its adoption in the UK as the national authentication system for education & research means that access to numerous resources can be managed through a single mechanism.
The Shibboleth System is a standards based, open source software package for web single sign-on across or within organizational boundaries. It allows sites to make informed authorization decisions for individual access of protected online resources in a privacy-preserving manner. More information on the Shibboleth System can be found on the Internet2 site.
Worcestershire County Council are members of the UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research. The federation provides a single solution to access online resources and services for education and research.
