Your Guide to Implementing, Operating, and Modernizing Identity at Your Institution

If you’re just beginning your IAM journey, the best place to start is by learning the basics. InCommon Academy offers beginner-friendly training, including IAM 101 content and recorded webinars, designed for IT professionals, campus leaders, and technical staff. You can also explore our interactive tool, IAM Sketch, to visualize how IAM systems are structured.

Your identity implementation is what makes secure, seamless access to services like eduroam, cloud apps, and the InCommon Federation possible. When properly configured, it allows your users to authenticate using their home institution credentials, whether they’re accessing Wi-Fi on another campus via eduroam, logging into research tools through the Federation, or using cloud platforms. Behind the scenes, your identity system integrates with these services using standards-based protocols, enabling trusted access while maintaining control and security.

Whether you’re starting from scratch or need support with a particular implementation, InCommon can connect you with the right resources. You can reach out to our team here, or work with a trusted InCommon Catalyst, technical partners approved to help institutions design, deploy, and optimize their IAM infrastructure.

Federation metadata is critical to enabling trust between identity providers (IdPs) and service providers (SPs). IAM systems use this metadata to exchange identity information securely and determine access permissions. InCommon Federation maintains and distributes this metadata, ensuring your institution can participate in a broader, trusted network of education and research services.

Not at all. IAM is critical for institutions of all sizes, even small colleges and community campuses. Scalable, community-supported tools from InCommon make it possible to start small, grow over time, and implement IAM components that fit your current needs and available resources.

While login is one part of it, IAM goes far beyond passwords. It includes managing user identities, roles, group access, authentication, authorization, provisioning, and federation. A complete IAM approach ensures users have the right access at the right time, across all systems. See how all of the core IAM capabilities work together by using IAM Sketch.

Using eduroam is a great step, but it’s just one piece of the bigger IAM picture. A full identity implementation also includes managing user roles and permissions, provisioning accounts, and maintaining an identity registry.

Implementing IAM can be complex, but you don’t have to do it alone. InCommon offers tools (like IAM Sketch), learning pathways (via the Academy), expert partners (Catalysts), and a strong peer community to help institutions of all sizes move forward at their own pace.

IAM is an evolving strategy. As users change roles, systems are added, and collaborations grow, your IAM implementation needs to adapt accordingly. That’s why it’s important to approach IAM as a long-term framework, not a single deployment.

IAM touches nearly every part of your organization, from IT to academic affairs, HR, student services, and research administration. Strong IAM helps improve user experience, streamline operations, and ensure secure access across every department and digital interaction.