Ukerna collaborates on a new initiative to deliver an open-source IEEE 802.1X supplicant
Ukerna, the network operator for Janet, the UK's education and research network, is to help deliver an open-source supplicant.
This will assist institutions in managing secure access to their networks.
This follows its technology partnership with the OpenSea Alliance, recently formed by leading networking and security companies including Extreme Networks, Identity Engines, Infoblox, Symantec, TippingPoint, and Trapeze Networks.
It is widely acknowledged in the education sector that there are limitations in the functionality provided by the current generation of freely available supplicants, particularly in a cross-platform environment.
The alternative of licensing third-party commercial supplicants is likely to be costly.
These factors hinder deployment of best practices in securing and controlling access to networks and services in the context of demanding teaching and research environments.
The free OpenSea Alliance supplicant currently being developed will address these problems and provide tools enabling distribution of pre-configured versions of the supplicant software thereby allowing rapid deployment within organisations.
For users of Janet, this initiative will also enhance the Janet Roaming service.
The Janet Roaming service allows users to acquire a connection to Janet at participating organisations using credentials provided by their home institution, thus avoiding the visited site having to manage and issue guest credentials.
The new supplicant will reduce the complexity of using Janet Roaming for many users, further increasing the value of the service to the academic community.
"The concept of community underpins everything Ukerna does and Janet is based on the need for organisations to communicate, collaborate and co-operate in the shared interests of education and research," states Louis Searchwell, technical specialist for Ukerna.
"A key area of focus for Ukerna is the promotion of secure networking to the community of users it serves.
"For these reasons, Ukerna is extremely keen to participate in the development of an open source 802.1X supplicant benefiting its users and the education and research communities across Europe and beyond".
Commented Sean Convery of the OpenSea Alliance: "We are delighted to have the acknowledged and renowned networking expertise of Ukerna on board with us at the foundation of the alliance.
"We are confident that our joint efforts will soon deliver significant and secure network access benefits to not only the UK and international education and research communities served by Janet, but also the commercial world.
"We see the role of the OpenSea supplicant as analogous to that served by Firefox in the browser landscape: excellent performance and usability in an open source project, answering current needs and promoting innovation across the board in future 802.1X support".
The formation of the OpenSea alliance was initiated, coordinated and promoted by Jon Oltsik, senior analyst at industry analyst firm the Enterprise Strategy Group.
Oltsik comments: "In a network-connected world challenged by ever-growing sophisticated security threats, open source solutions provide an avenue for standards-based implementation and rapid technology adoption.
"In this way, I believe that open source efforts like the Opensea Alliance can lead to security and privacy advances that benefit society at large as well as individual organisations and users".
The name OpenSea stands for Open Secure Edge Access and reflects the group's focus on open source solutions for networking and security.
In its initial project, the OpenSea Alliance plans to develop a robust cross-platform open source 802.1X supplicant.
The OpenSea 802.1X supplicant development is well underway as it is based upon the existing Xsupplicant project, a cross-platform open-source 802.1X client originally developed within the University of Maryland and taken over by Chris Hessing while at the University of Utah.
Xsupplicant uses a modular architecture to enable extensions including new authentication types and integration with other security components.
OpenSea plans to support the extension of Xsupplicant with key functionality including support for Windows XP and Vista, a robust GUI, and an API for extensibility.
The OpenSea alliance is incorporated in the State of California as a 501c-6 non-profit organisation and has established a governance model based loosely on the popular and successful Eclipse Foundation.
In addition to its initial 802.1X project, the group will focus on open source networking and security technologies.
To facilitate and promote current and future projects, the OpenSea Alliance welcomes technology vendors, academic institutions, industry standards groups and individual developers to join to the group and participate in its efforts.
"With the funding, support, and participation of so many industry leaders, the OpenSea Alliance will certainly help to drive more open source activity into networking and security," said Alan DeKok, co-founder and leader of the FreeRadius project and a supporter of the OpenSEA Foundation.
"I look forward to future collaboration between the OpenSea Foundation and FreeRadius project as the two groups have a common goal and a lot of synergy."
