Dartmouth College with support from the Mellon Foundation is working to develop use of Public Key Infrastructure in Academic Computing. There are many potential applications for PKI in an academic setting. There are also many obstacles to be overcome in order to provide PKI based services broadly in the standard network computing environment.

This project proposes to address these issues with a dual approach. A deployment track, lead by Computing Services, is working to simplify the use of current X.509 PKI technology and to develop usable applications of it that address current security concerns. A design track, lead by Computer Science is examining limitations of the technology and working to develop solutions to the problems uncovered. The design track plans to implement a more secure infrastructure by incorporating secure co-processing technology in the services. Alternate formulations of PKI technology are also being examined.

The project aims to develop inter-institutional applications and has been working with a group of Internet2 institutions, along with the University of Wisconsin and the University of California - San Diego. The Dartmouth PKI Lab web site is used to disseminate general information about PKI systems and share the results of our development work.

Of special interest are:

Dartmouth college PKI deployment notes

Web Page Access Control Using PKI 2004

Using a Non-Microsoft CA with Smartcard Logon 2004

Using PKI Authentication with Shibboleth 2003