Partners include Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Texas, and the University of Utah

Internet2 was awarded today a $1.84 million grant by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for the first year of a two-year project to work with the research and education community to build privacy infrastructure and tools to help individuals preserve their privacy and strengthen the nation's identity ecosystem. Internet2's partners include the Carnegie Mellon and Brown University computer science departments, University of Texas, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Utah.

“This builds on our 10-year history of Internet2’s leadership providing federated identity services for universities. Privacy is a critical attribute of identity and a far-reaching concept, arising in many very different situations as users want to manage their privacy across several contexts – on campus and in business, as a citizen or consumer,” said Internet2 CEO & President Dave Lambert. “All of these uses and applications require a consistent and robust privacy infrastructure in the nation’s identity ecosystem. We intend to build key elements of that infrastructure over the next two years and to work closely with the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace.”

The consistent and robust privacy infrastructure planned includes common attributes; user-effective privacy managers; anonymous credentials; Internet2's InCommon Identity Federation service; and encourages the use of multi-factor authentication and other technologies.