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Who Are You?
Computer User Identification at UNT
By Dr.
Maurice Leatherbury, Associate Vice President for Computing and
Chief Technology Officer, CITC
T o many people on the
UNT campus, there seems to be a bewildering number of ways that they
have to make themselves known to the computers that they use in their
everyday work. Here are the most common login identifications that UNT
users encounter:
·
Novell network login – this is the identification that
you use to get access to UNT’s network on a daily basis. In addition
to your user name, you must use your Novell password to get into your
computer.
·
GroupWise login – some users
must enter a user ID and password to get access to UNT’s official
faculty and staff e-mail system, GroupWise,
particularly if they’re working from home or access
GroupWise over the Web
·
“EUID” – this is UNT’s Enterprise User
IDentification, which usually takes the
form of “MCL0002” (your initials and a number). The EUID is used to
authenticate to the Enterprise Information System (EIS),
Eaglenet (our wireless network), the
Library’s online databases, WebCT, our
computer based training systems,
Eaglemail (the student e-mail system), and Web-based
student storage.
A password must also be entered to get access to these systems, and
that password is different from the Novell one unless you specifically
assign the same password to each system.
·
“EMPLID” – the EMPLoyee
IDentification number that is assigned by
EIS to each person in the system. You generally don’t need the EMPLID
to log in to any system, but you do sometimes need it to access your
record(s) in EIS. The EMPLID is the number that is printed on your UNT
photo ID card, although a recent ruling by UNT’s attorneys may result
in the EMPLID being removed from future ID cards.
Why?
You’re probably wondering by now why we have so
many digital identities and why we have to remember so many passwords.
The simple answer is that each of the systems described above stores
its own user ID’s and passwords and thus you must supply that system’s
credentials to access it. We’ve done a lot of work to hide the
complexities of different authentication systems from UNT’s computer
users, work that for example automatically logs you into the
Cognos reporting system if you’re already
logged into UNT’s portal (http://my.unt.edu)
But we’ve only been able to go so far in shielding our users from
multiple logins, hence the various logins described above.
The “holy grail” of authentication systems at
many institutions and businesses is “single sign on”, meaning
that you only have to log in only once and your login credentials are
supplied by your local computer to any system from that point on that
needs to know your identification. If we could reach that goal at UNT,
the EUID would be our preferred credential since it’s stored on a
system that uses open standards (“LDAP”, for those who care) and is
easier for programmers to write code for than Novell’s system. But
it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to use a single user ID and password
for Novell, GroupWise, and the various
systems that attach to your EUID because of the complexities of the
Novell system, which is arguably one of the more secure systems in use
today. However, there is some hope for the
beleaguered computer user at UNT, at least as far as having to
remember user ID’s and passwords is concerned.
Your future may be synchronized
We have been working for literally years to make
it possible to synchronize Novell login ID’s with
EUID’s so that the password for those two ID’s at least could
be synchronized. That requires that we know, for example, that “mauricel”
in Novell’s directory refers to the same person as “MCL0002” in the
EUID directory, and it’s surprising how difficult that seemingly
simple matchup has proven to be. Automated
attempts to match them (on the user’s name, for example,) have
resulted in about 60% of the user identities being matched, but that’s
not good enough for us to start synchronizing passwords on only
two-thirds of our users. To improve the matches, we recently asked
everyone to verify their identification when they changed their
passwords in the EUID system, but we still can’t match about 15% of
the users in the Novell directory. And while you might be thinking
that a solution would be to change either the Novell user ID (“mauricel”)
or the EUID name (“MCL0002”) to match them, neither of those systems
allow the “key value” (name) to change once it’s initially created.
This summer, we’ll be asking the network managers
to work with the CITC to finish the task of matching all Novell
accounts with users in the EUID system, at which time you’ll be able
to change your password and have that change reflected in both the
Novell login and any login that relies upon your EUID. While you’ll
still have to remember to use your Novell login to get started each
morning and your EUID to get logged into the UNT portal, etc., you’ll
only have to remember one password. We’re hoping that that step will
convince everybody on campus that they don’t have to resort to taping
their passwords to the bottom of their keyboards in order to remember
them!
Get up-to-date EIS information with the
Enterprise Information Systems Status Update. Click
here for the
latest issue.
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