The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has announced the publication of a new Recommended Practice, ESPReSSO: Establishing Suggested Practices Regarding Single Sign-On (NISO RP-11-2011). The ESPReSSO recommended practice is the result of the NISO Chair's Initiative - a project of the chair of NISO's Board of Directors, focusing on a specific issue that would benefit from study and the development of a recommended practice or standard. This recommended practice identifies practical solutions for improving the use of single sign-on authentication technologies to ensure a seamless experience for the user.
Oliver Pesch, Chief Strategist for E-Resource Access and Management Services at EBSCO Information Services and the 2008-2009 Chair of NISO's Board of Directors, chose the issue of standardising seamless, item-level linking through single sign-on (SSO) authentication technologies in a networked information environment, which resulted in the formation of the ESPReSSO Working Group.
Currently a hybrid environment of authentication practices exists, including older methods of userid/password, IP authentication, and/or proxy servers along with newer federated authentication protocols such as Athens and Shibboleth. The ESPReSSO recommended practice identifies changes that can be made immediately to improve the authentication experience for the user, even in a hybrid situation, while encouraging both publishers/service providers and libraries to transition to the newer Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)-based authentication, such as Shibboleth.
The ESPReSSO Recommended Practice is available for free download from the NISO website at www.niso.org/publications/rp.
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