FEIDHE (a project) / Electronic Identification in Finnish Higher Education

In Finnish universities and polytechnics students and staff members have access to several information systems and services requiring user authentication. Traditionally authentication is based on username-passwords pairs. In the information systems the passwords or alternatively, some one-way hash values deriving from them are stored in a user database. When the user is to be authenticated to the system, one is prompted to enter one’s username and password, which are then compared to the data stored in the database. If the username-password pair correspond to ones in the user database, access is granted to the resources that are available for the user.