Researchers log in quickly and securely with eduID at SURF Research Cloud

Collaboration in research environment

SURF Research Cloud is a digital research environment in which researchers from different institutions and organisations - and from different countries - can collaborate. They manage their own software and can easily share software. Before SURF Research Cloud, for example, researchers could work in the SURF High Performance Computing (HPC) cloud, but that was very technical and therefore cumbersome. "SURF Research Cloud is like the shell around those complicated clouds," says SURF's Ivar Janmaat. Together with his team, he developed SURF Research Cloud.

'Own user database? That's a lot of administration!'

"During development, we ran into a problem. How do researchers log in who don't have an account at an institution affiliated to SURF? Think of researchers from industry or governments. For them, we would have had to set up our own user database, but that in turn means maintaining a separate administration system. We did not see that as a core activity of our service."

Solution: eduID

The solution was at hand: eduID. "A researcher without an institution account creates an eduID - that's done in a minute - then someone from the research partnership invites that person and they then log in to SURF Research Cloud with the eduID," explains Janmaat. "The login process is the same for the eduID user as for the user with an institution account."

Combining eduID and SRAM

"SURF Research Access Management (SRAM) takes care of this login process for SURF Research Cloud. SRAM makes it very easy for a service to use this login process: services using SRAM no longer need their own user administration. An eduID user can - if set up - log in to multiple services with the same eduID, so authorisation and roles at different services can be aligned if desired. With SRAM and eduID, SURF Research Cloud is completely unburdened when it comes to user management."

Future eduID

Janmaat: "There are many questions about the future of identity. Will eduID also replace institutional identities? And what about European identity wallets, for example? One thing I know for sure, our colleagues from eduID and SRAM are keeping an eye on this and making sure we don't have to worry about it."