edu-ID for the Switch Community

What is the Switch Community?

The categories of organizations which belong to the Switch Community are defined in Appendix 1 of the Service Regulations for services by Switch.

The following categories of Swiss organizations belong to the Switch Community:
  • Cantonal universities
  • Federal Institutes of Technology [ETH]
  • ETH Research Facilities
  • Technical Colleges
  • Teacher Training Colleges

For the Switch Community, the participation in the Switch edu-ID Federation is according to the Service Regulations for Services by Switch. An organization part of the Switch Community may operate an Identity Provider (IdP) to serve as Home Organization for its users and it may operate edu-ID-enabled web resources (Service Providers, SP).

Becoming a Switch edu-ID Participant

The Switch edu-ID Service Description is the core document where all rights and obligations are listed, e.g. the 'Switch edu-ID Federation Policy' in chapter 5.

To participate in Switch edu-ID, your organization has to be part of the Switch Community and request the Basic Service 'Switch edu-ID'. Contact the Switch edu-ID team at eduid-support@switch.ch.

Standard Data Protection Clause

In order to satisfy the data protection laws and regulations, every IdP Operator is obliged to follow the instructions concerning Legal Templates for Switch edu-ID. See also chapter 6.3.3 of the Switch edu-ID Service Description.

Technical Information

In order to technically join the federation it is of course necessary to install and configure an Identity Provider. Switch strongly recommends to use the open source implementation Shibboleth. For that purpose, Switch provides installation instructions and How-To manuals for all major platforms.

More on the Identity Provider deployment page

Identity Provider Hosting: Switch provides the service 'Identity Provider Hosting'. Instead of investing the resources to maintain their own Identity Provider, organizations that belong to the Switch Community can let Switch operate an Identity Provider for them.

More on the Identity Provider Hosting service

Already Participating Home Organizations

See list of Home Organizations