Services and Solutions
AAF is Australia's leading provider of identity and access management services to the education and research sector. Our trust and identity solutions are co-designed by a nationally engaged expert team using international best practice. We make it easy for researchers and students to securely access education and research institutions nationally and internationally.
What we do for researchers and education
AAF is partnering with universities, higher education institutions, researchers and national research infrastructure to develop a system-wide approach to access. We are partnering with researchers and educators to enable access to the valuable services, technologies, data and computational power.
We provide a single sign on solution for research and education that allows you to seamlessly access a wide range of educational and research services including:
For a list of connected services see our Services page.
Learn how the AAF is helping national researchers collaborate to support scientific advances and research development.
Researching internationally?
We also provide an easy way to collaborate with international colleagues using eduGAIN. EduGAIN allows you to easily access global research services such as CERN and LIGO. Learn more about eduGAIN.
Are you a national research infrastructure?
The Australian Access Federation (AAF) is the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) Capability for Trust and Identity. We are building a Trust and Identity Framework that includes common policies, standards and technologies so researchers will enjoy a more cohesive network of services. Through one username and password they will be able to seamlessly access multiple national research capabilities.. Learn more about the Trust and Identity Pathfinder Project.
What we do for institutions and universities
You can securely share information and collaborate with all Australian universities, CSIRO, NSW Health and other research organisations. Many national research infrastructure are distributed throughout Australia’s universities, and we can work with your IT team and them, to enable access to those services and facilities.
One integration with your authentication directory allows your staff to easily access a wide variety of services including:
Our fully cloud-hosted solution, Rapid Identity Provider (Rapid IdP) enables you to connect to the federation while we manage the infrastructure for your organisation, delivering a secure, resilient and highly available service. Learn more about Rapid IdP.
Our technology operates in a highly secure and reliable environment that provides federated authentication to subscribers. This makes it easier and faster to access a wide range of services both internal and external to your home institution.
Learn how Macquarie University is using the AAF to provide access to educators, students and researchers.
Collaborating Internationally?
We provide a simple way to connect your organsiation internationally using eduGAIN. EduGAIN helps your students, staff and researchers connect with colleagues around the world to exchange information. Learn more about eduGAIN.
For publishers and platform providers
You can provide your content to all Australian universities, CSIRO and medial research institutes with a single configuration.
Publishers in the AAF provide access to products or services, which support education, research and development. With the AAF you can control access to allow only authorised users to connect to your content with their home institution credentials.
If you provide services to the Australian research sector connecting to the federation will:
Learn how the AAF and AURIN are providing access for research into our towns cities and communities.
Working internationally?
If you have international users, sharing your service is simple with eduGAIN. EduGAIN allows for collaboration with partners from international research facilities and universities from over 70 global federations. Learn more about eduGAIN.
What we do for industry and commercial organisations
We are partnering with national research infrastructures to enable access by industry. A consistent and easy way in which to access research infrastructure will enable collaboration between industry and researchers, supporting research development and commercialisation.
You can improve your user experience by verifying customers quickly and accurately using VerifID. VerifID is integrated with universities and organisations, enabling verification of customers associated with their institution. VerifID:
Discover AAF projects and case studies
Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre
AAF has partnered with the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre exploring options to provide seamless and secure access to their supercomputing service using federated identities.
The Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre is one of two Tier-1 high-performance computing facilities in Australia. Its primary function is to accelerate scientific research for the benefit of the nation. Pawsey’s service and expertise in supercomputing, data, cloud services and visualisation enables research across a variety of fields including astronomy, life sciences, medicine, energy, resources and artificial intelligence.
Pawsey’s supercomputing systems play a critical role, for a wide range of research disciplines and features as an important part of many researchers’ workflows. This Incubator will raise the security profile of Pawsey and provide a single user account across their ecosystem. The Pawsey Incubator is a foundational building block in trust and identity for national research infrastructure and plays a critical role in the implementation of trust and identity across the sector.
Microscopy Australia
AAF has partnered with Microscopy Australia exploring impact tracking through persistent identifiers (PIDs).
Microscopy Australia are a consortium of university-based microscopy facilities that more than 3,500 researchers across Australia use each year. They aim to empower Australian science and innovation by making advanced microscopes accessible to all researchers.
One of the greatest challenges in research is to connect and report on distributed services and this incubator explores how richer reporting, impact tracking and usage data can be provided through ORCID iDs and PIDs across national research infrastructure.
National Imaging Facility
AAF has partnered with the National Imaging Facility (NIF) exploring improved access and collaboration for complex multi-site human imaging projects and medical trials using sensitive data.
NIF is Australia’s advanced imaging network, and provides open access to flagship imaging equipment, tools, data and analysis. NIF aims to maintain Australia’s world leading role in advanced imaging technology and make its capabilities accessible to all Australian medical researchers to solve challenges across research and industry. They enable research in areas such as mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), epilepsy and melanoma. NIF are critical to research translation, clinical trials and the commercialisation of medical products.
As one of AAF’s Trust and Identity Pathfinder Incubators, we have been working with NIF on enhancing their access — providing NIF partners, institutional researchers and external users with the opportunity for improved access and collaboration when undertaking complex, multi-site human imaging projects such as national clinical trials that use sensitive data.