PKI Deployment Forum

The PKI Deployment Forum brings together colleges and universities that have decided to deploy PKI-based services on their campuses. The presentations focus on the details needed to make PKI deployments successful, covering both technical and policy issues and including related areas such as training, vendor selection, CA options, buy-versus-build decisions, key distribution, and audit. Each year, the PKI Deployment Forum will take place on a different campus where deployment is under way, allowing participants to learn firsthand about what has worked and what hasn't. EDUCAUSE is pleased that the University of Wisconsin–Madison has agreed to host this initial meeting.

PKI remains a unique technology that provides in one package access security, encryption, and digital signatures. Although the underlying mathematics of PKI is relatively simple, actual deployment of a public-key infrastructure has proven daunting. Nonetheless, the number of organizations rolling out PKI implementations continues to expand, and a critical mass of colleges and universities have now made the plunge. In addition to the planned presentations, the PKI Deployment Forum provides a crucial opportunity for personal networking among the staff who represent the PKI pioneers in higher education. These early adopters will find that consulting and collaborating with each other help minimize the costs and hassles of deploying PKI and maximize the benefits.

We are currently planning sessions on the following topics:

• CA Signing Options (Self-Signed, USHER, Commercial)
• Selecting and Distributing Tokens
• Approaches to Audit
• Directory Integration Issues
• PKI-Enabled Apps That Work
• User Education
• Help-Desk Issues