Upcoming Changes to UA NetID Effective Fall Semester 2009

With the start of Fall semester 2009, UA NetIDs will become "permanent." Currently, NetIDs expire when a NetID account holder has not had an active affiliation with the University for 18 months. However, NetIDs are increasingly used as identifiers for applications, both internal and external to the University, that have the need to grant access privileges spanning longer periods of time--often permanently. In order for the UA NetID to remain viable in today's IT landscape, it must be persistent.

Beginning with the transition date, all UA NetID accounts that have not yet been deleted (generally, employees that have been active within the last 18 months and students who were enrolled in Spring 2008, or later) will be retained permanently. Additionally, all new NetIDs created subsequent to the transition date will be permanent.UITS is also planning to expand the maximum length of NetID usernames (from the current limit of 8 characters) to 16 characters, effective January 2010. This move will assure that users can continue to create NetID usernames for many years to come.

Any department relying on NetID/WebAuth authentication for access to applications, resources or services should ensure that:

1)Their applications are performing authorization, in addition to authentication. That is, the applications should check that the person signing in has not only successfully authenticated, but also meets other criteria for access. NetID/WebAuth are able to provide basic attributes--"activeEmployee" and "activeStudent"--indicating whether the person is currently active as an employee or a student; more sophisticated authorization can be performed using data available via the Enterprise Directory Service (EDS) and/or Shibboleth (see below). If access to your applications and resources is controlled solely via NetID/WebAuth authentication, and not by some means of authorization, former employees and students, departmental sponsored visitors, and others will still be able to access them long after leaving the University.

2) Any fields on HTML forms, or column definitions in database tables, used for holding NetID usernames can accommodate 16 characters.

For departments needing to add authorization to their applications or services, UITS offers solutions via Shibboleth and the Enterprise Directory Service (EDS). Information on these services, including instructions on registration, configuration, and utilization, can be found at the UITS Systems Integration & Architecture site - sia.uits.arizona.edu/iam.

We look forward to helping you with your NetID authorization needs!