Ann West

SENIOR DIRECTOR, INCOMMON STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS AND RESEARCH, INTERNET2

Ann West

Ann West is the Senior Director of InCommon Strategic Partnerships and Research at Internet2. She works directly with the research and education community to determine what new technology capabilities campuses need, and then partners with IT leaders to bring those ideas to reality.

Ann is a foundational expert in Identity and Access Management (IAM)—the technology that ensures the right person has access to the right digital tools. She has been deeply involved for more than three decades and loved the community experience so much that she joined Internet2 to lead outreach for several large projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

As the former Associate Vice President for Trust and Identity, Ann’s work has been instrumental in the Trust & Identity ecosystem. This includes evangelizing the adoption of IAM practices, growing the community of IAM practitioners, collaborating with the US government and higher education on identity assurance standards and practices, developing and managing third-party support programs, and expanding services like eduroam, a service that provides secure Wi-Fi access on campuses worldwide.

Ann’s current work specializes in the complex, long-term infrastructure projects that require community buy-in and strong partnerships to succeed.

CATEGORIES

Identity (1) InCommon Community (2) Uncategorized (1) Federation (2)

TAGS

Identity & Access Management Announcements & Notices IAM Online Training & Support Guidance, Best Practices, & Support Institutional or Federal Research Multi-Factor Authentication
Identity

Internet2 Helping Campuses with Identity Proofing

Reading Time: 2 minutesResearch and higher education (R&E) institutions are navigating increasing pressure from multiple fronts to establish robust identity proofing practices.  Identity proofing is the organizational process of confirming that individuals are who they claim to be before granting them access to sensitive resources or credentials. In fall 2025, Internet2 conducted a survey examining identity proofing needs across the community. Several key use cases emerged from this research. How Internet2 Can Help Internet2 has long supported identity and access management (IAM) professionals by providing software, trust infrastructure, and educational resources that strengthen and improve the sharing of and access to resources. Identity proofing is […]

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InCommon Community Identity & Access Management

InCommon Survey Seeks Campus Input on Identity Verification Needs

Reading Time: 2 minutesAre you wondering how higher ed institutions across the nation are managing identity verification and fraud prevention challenges? So are we. InCommon, powered by Internet2, has launched a comprehensive survey to understand how U.S. campuses are addressing these challenges. This initiative comes at a critical time when institutions face mounting pressure to implement robust identity assurance measures for addressing fraud concerns and accessing sensitive research data and other resources. The under 10-minute survey is open until Oct. 15.  Why Now? The landscape of identity management in higher education has reached an inflection point. Federal agencies, particularly those managing sensitive research data, increasingly […]

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InCommon Community Announcements & Notices

InCommon Survey Seeks Campus Input on Identity Verification Needs

Are you wondering how higher ed institutions across the nation are managing identity verification and fraud prevention challenges? So are we. InCommon, powered by Internet2, has launched a comprehensive survey to understand how U.S. campuses are addressing these challenges. This initiative comes at a critical time when institutions face mounting pressure to implement robust identity assurance measures for addressing fraud concerns and accessing sensitive research data and other resources. The under 10-minute survey is open until Oct. 15.  Why Now? The landscape of identity management in higher education has reached an inflection point. Federal agencies, particularly those managing sensitive research […]

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Uncategorized IAM Online Training & Support

InCommon’s Identity Innovations: A Year of Moving Research and Education Forward Together

Remember when logging into different university systems felt like you needed a password manager just for your password managers? Those days are becoming history, thanks to InCommon’s ambitious Futures 2 strategy launched in March 2024. As we mark the one-year milestone, let’s explore how this engaged, peer-driven identity and access management (IAM) community is enhancing the digital landscape for research and education (R&E). Breaking Down Barriers with Course Sharing The landscape of higher education is evolving, and InCommon is leading the way. Through a groundbreaking partnership with the Interactive Distance Education Alliance (IDEA), we’ve brought together 20 institutions to tackle […]

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Federation Announcements & Notices Guidance, Best Practices, & Support

Expanding Academic Horizons: How Federated Identity Can Transform Cross-Institutional Learning

Reading Time: 2 minutes2024 has been a pivotal year for InCommon, fueled by our Futures2 Strategy pushing new explorations and investments across the community. In reviewing our 20-year history, one of this year’s initiatives stands out as having the significant potential to again transform the community in profound ways. In researching where we could make our biggest impact, we discovered that course-sharing is a remarkably powerful and under-utilized tool in higher education, offering the opportunity to increase academic breadth without increasing costs. To explore this topic, we partnered with IDEA, a consortium of leading U.S. public universities, working together to offer online, flexible, and affordable […]

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Federation Institutional or Federal Research Multi-Factor Authentication

One Federation, Many Agencies: How InCommon Simplifies Federal Compliance Requirements

In October 2024, the National Science Foundation (NSF)  announced new multi-factor authentication (MFA) requirements for Research.gov access. Those of you following along at home probably remember the National Institutes of Health (NIH) requiring MFA for access to their grants management system, eRA, in September 2021. It’s not uncommon for each federal agency to announce overlapping but related compliance requirements for access to different systems based on security and/or business needs. This leaves higher education IT to juggle these overlapping but slightly different needs, each released at different timelines for different campus groups. It also forces IT to create complex systems […]

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