By Tom Barton and Glenn Lipscomb
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) previously announced new identity management requirements that could affect access for some of your researchers and scientists. As of September 15, 2021, NIH will transition to multi-factor authentication (MFA) and the release of attributes that are part of the REFEDS Research & Scholarship (R&S) bundle. All users of electronic Research Administration (eRA) modules will be affected by this requirement.
InCommon has been working very closely with NIH on this transition to help campuses understand the need to support R&S and implement MFA. NIH and eRA will continue to support federated credentials until the September 15 deadline, when MFA will need to be enforced and confirmed via the campus Identity Provider system.
Many institutions have completed a successful test with NIH’s Compliance Check Tool to ensure their users are able to use their home institution credentials to access eRA. For those institutions that have not yet completed the compliance check tool test, we are continuing to encourage you to do so before the September 15 deadline. Your Research Administration unit may be able to list all of your eRA users so that you can ascertain whether all have been enabled for MFA, or you can use the NIH RePORT Tool to show all of your Principal Investigators with active NIH awards.
InCommon has developed a number of resources to answer your questions about MFA, R&S and more including a handful of informational webinars. All of our resources can be accessed through InCommon’s GET NIH wiki page.
You may also contact help@incommon.org if you have specific questions.
Resources
REFEDS Research & Scholarship
NIH’s Compliance Check Tool
NIH RePORT Tool
InCommon’s Get NIH Ready wiki page
eRA web page explaining the transition in greater detail