Internet2 Middleware Initiative (http://www.internet2.edu/middleware/) has articulated the issues of public key infrastructure or "middleware" and its Early Harvest and early Adopters projects provide a reference model for what the SURA PKI Consortium proposes. The University of Tennessee and Kentucky Medical School are participating in the Early Adopters Program with the I2 Medical Middleware initiative.

PKI for Networked Higher Education (http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/groups/pki/) Chaired by Dr. Clair Goldsmith of University of Alabama at Birmingham, this Working Group of Net@Edu "include[s] a series of summit meetings that span higher education, industry, and government to capture the state of the art, the outstanding problems, and who is doing what [in PKI]. Authentication/PKI infrastructure pilots will be commenced through the Internet as well as advanced network environments (such as Internet2)"

EDUCAUSE/Internet2 edu-Person Task Force (http://www.educause.edu/eduperson/) "has the mission of defining an LDAP object class that includes widely-used person attributes in higher education." SURA members participate in this effort.

National Institute of Standards & Technology PKI Program (http://csrc.nist.gov/pki/) "The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is taking a leadership role in the development of a Federal Public Key Infrastructure that supports digital signatures and other public key-enabled security services. NIST is coordinating with industry and technical groups developing PKI technology to foster interoperability of PKI products and projects." John Wandelt, Georgia Tech Research Institute, is an active member of the Technical Working Group (http://csrc.nist.gov/pki/twg/welcome.html).

CREN Certificate Authority Initiative (http://www.cren.net/ca/index.html) Georgia Institute of Technology is an original pilot member of the CREN CA initiative. Georgia Tech is investigating CREN CA as part of the solution set for PKI interoperability for:

• JSTOR authentication and authorization
• State of Georgia pilot program for newly enacted digital certificates law
• Remote access from any ISP into campus based resources and services
• Authenticated wireless and walk-up access