Net One Systems built the first cloud authentication platform of its kind, replacing self-hosted infrastructure and custom federation code with officially supported products.
On June 22, our partner Net One Systems announced that Doshisha Women's University in Kyoto has gone live on a new cloud authentication platform combining Cisco Duo and Cirrus Bridge. It is the first configuration of its kind in the world, and it is registered with GakuNin, Japan's national academic identity federation.
The challenge at Doshisha Women's University will be familiar to identity teams on any continent. The university ran a self-hosted SAML IdP that required downtime for every version upgrade and vulnerability patch. Its connection to GakuNin was a custom implementation, dependent on the small number of engineers who understood it. Both were working, and both were fragile.
Net One Systems designed a replacement built entirely on supported products. Cisco Duo provides single sign-on and multi-factor authentication. Cirrus Bridge is the piece that makes federation possible: it allows a commercial SSO platform like Duo to register with an academic identity federation, translating between the university's cloud identity platform and the multilateral trust framework that GakuNin operates.
The results for the university's IT team were immediate. Version upgrades no longer require downtime. The GakuNin connection is officially supported rather than custom-built. And routine federation work, from adding new service providers to renewing certificates, takes a fraction of the effort it used to.
"We're proud to have helped Doshisha Women's University modernize its identity management while leveraging GakuNin to collaborate with institutions worldwide." Dedra Chamberlin, CEO of Cirrus Identity.
Because GakuNin participates in eduGAIN, the interfederation service connecting academic identity federations worldwide, students and researchers at Doshisha Women's University now authenticate through the same global trust fabric that links scholars across borders. It is the same pattern Cirrus Bridge customers use with InCommon in the United States, now proven in production with GakuNin.
Our thanks to Net One Systems for leading the implementation and to the teams at Cisco and Doshisha Women's University for the collaboration that made this milestone possible.
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