MIT Touchstone Authentication Landing Page

Touchstone and Duo updates Information Systems and Technology (IS&T) launched a new version of Touchstone – the Institute’s single sign-on (SSO) web authentication service – now powered by Okta Identity Engine, a modern cloud-based and extensible platform. Following a successful pilot involving numerous MIT systems and services, IS&T updated Touchstone's configuration on the so that all Touchstone-enabled systems will use the new Okta-powered single sign-on service. For more information, see: Touchstone powered by Okta

On this page:

Overview

Touchstone is the MIT implementation of the Shibboleth SSO, an open source web single sign on application developed by Internet2. It allows login using various methods, including username and password and MIT certificate, and also allows users in the InCommon Federation or Touchstone Collaboration account to authenticate to a variety of web services securely.

Prior to the implementation of Touchstone, most websites used pure certificates to login. While certificates are an extremely secure method of authentication, certificates are frustrating in various ways, and part of Touchstone's purpose is to help work around these frustrations.

When a website works with Touchstone, you can log in with any of:

• your MIT certificate
• or your MIT kerberos username/password
• or with a Collaboration Account, if the website supports it.

How to Obtain

IS&T Is in the process of moving to a new collaboration account system. During the transition, please contact the IS&T Service Desk if you need access to any products or services via a new collaboration account.

Troubleshooting and FAQ's

• Touchstone FAQ
• What to do if a browser or App is prompting for a password after updating my certificate on a MacOS machine?

Have Questions or Still Need Help?

• Contact the IS&T Service Desk