Issuance of SURFconext attributes

Via SURFconext students and staff members of educational institutes in the Netherlands can log into several online services. The Privacy by Design foundation is one such service, and can thus obtain attributes about someone who logs in, namely:

  • given name
  • family name
  • email address
  • institution
  • staff/student
  • local registration number.

These personal attributes are obtained from the institution of the user. The correctness of the attributes is the institution’s responsibility. The foundation does not check them.

The foundation receives, after permission of the user, these attributes and signs them digitally, using its own private key, and puts them in the IRMA app of the user. There they appear as a surfconext credential, containing the above attributes. The foundation subsequently removes these attributes from its own systems. The foundation does not keep a log of issuance: it does not record which attributes it issues to whom at what time.

The validity period of this surfconext credential is three months. This relatively short time is required, so that people who finish their studies, stop working, or leave their (educational) institution in some other way, only have a short time period in which they can use these credentials. After expiration of the credential, users have to obtain a new (fresh) credential.

At this stage this attribute issuance is available only for students and staff members of a limited number of institutions in higher education in the Netherlands. Are you studying or working at such an institution but does your institution not occur in the list at the SURFconext issuance page? This means that your institution has not “switched on” the connection to the foundation Privacy by Design. In that case you cannot receive attributes via SURFconext. The best thing that you can do is to contact locally at your institution the people responsible for computer support (in particular: identity management) and ask them to send an email to the address support’at’surfconext.nl, with the simple request: Please give the Privacy by Design foundation access as Service Provider to our institution (in Dutch: AUB de stichting Privacy by Design voor onze instelling toelaten als Service Provider).

Back to attribute issuance.