A well-balanced programme that focused on practical issues made the recent TERENA EuroCAMP (European Campus Architecture Middleware Planning) workshop the most successful to date, according to organisers and attendees. Around 60 participants from almost 30 organisations across Europe took part in the lively event in Athens, 5-6 November 2008.

This workshop returned to ‘basics’ and the original aim of EuroCAMP, to develop middleware awareness at grassroots level and present some of the various identity management (IdM) and authentication mechanisms available. The focus was single sign on (SSO) systems and the event was mainly aimed at people who operate directories and identity management systems within campuses.

For the first time, Japanese and South African participants attended a TERENA Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) training course, joining the event in Roztoky u Prahy (Czech Republic) last week from 23-24 October 2008.

30 trainees from 14 countries took part, including representatives from both the commercial and non-commercial world. They completed exercises, heard presentations and joined in discussions about the legal, technical, operational and organisational aspects of CSIRTs, as well as the role of CSIRTs in working with vulnerabilities. The training materials used were developed originally in the TRANSITS (Training of Network Security Incident Teams Staff) project.

Health, education and the environment within the Mediterranean region are all benefiting from the growth of e-infrastructures, such as high-speed Internet connections and distributed (Grid) computing. e-Infrastructures for research and education allow members of the Mediterranean region’s scientific and academic communities to work together, and with their counterparts from the European Union (EU). Many of the projects they collaborate on will benefit people in the Mediterranean, promoting not only scientific but also social development. Yet the availability, quality and accessibility of e-infrastructures are still significantly uneven - not only across the region, but within individual countries.

To hear about the successes so far and to discuss the economics, policies and strategies needed to achieve the long-term sustainability of e-infrastructures in the region, the ‘EU-Med Event’ on 4 November will bring together project researchers, invited policy makers and civil servants from relevant ministries and institutions, executives and officials from international organisations as well as private companies and foundations.

The eighth annual TERENA Compendium of National Research and Education Networks in Europe is just published. The 2008 edition includes data from more than 40 countries across Europe and surrounding regions. Information about additional countries from other regions is available online.

As in previous years, the range of topics surveyed has been wide ranging including service development, the increasing use of fibre optics, staffing and funding, and general information regarding the NRENs. The 2008 edition also gives a more in-depth analysis and interpretation of NREN traffic figures than in past years.

A new software package, handbook and service are the results of the TERENA Task Force on Enhanced Communication Services, TF-ECS, which held its final meeting last week, on 30 September.

Participants from nine organisations joined in by videoconference. This meeting marked the end of TF-ECS activities and the conclusion of its two-year mandate. During its lifetime, eleven national research and education networking organisations (NRENs) contributed to the task force’s work. Achievements include the completion of two planned deliverables and of a third, additional goal, to be announced upon final completion within the next few weeks.

The Programme Committee for the TERENA Networking Conference 2009 has issued a Call for Papers exploring the theme, ‘Virtuality into Reality’.

The conference will be held from 8-11 June 2009 in Málaga in Spain, organised by TERENA and hosted by the University of Málaga and RedIRIS, the Spanish national academic and research network.

The second eduroam admin training ‘train the trainers’ course was held on the 29 – 30 September 2008.

Twelve eduroam administrators from 8 different European countries (Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Slovakia, Slovenia and the UK) attended the two part course held at the training facility in the University Computing Centre (Srce) in Zagreb, Croatia.

The GN2 Security Toolset development team are looking for around 15 people to become the second group of Approved GN2 Security Toolset Trainers, at a course in Switzerland in February 2009. This follows a successful pilot course in March 2008, which helped to bring the Security Toolset into use in a number of institutions across Europe.

The next round of training is aimed primarily at NREN security operatives, but is also open to the non-commercial computer security community as a whole and possibly to the commercial world as well.

RoEduNet, the Romanian national research and education networking organisation (NREN), is to establish a computer security incident response team (CSIRT). This decision follows a visit by a delegation from TERENA and SWITCH, the Swiss NREN, on 11-12 August 2008.

The meeting was undertaken on behalf of the GN2 project's development support activity (NA4) and security activity (JRA2), which encourages all NRENs connected to the GÉANT2 network to establish a CSIRT. This ensures that designated contacts are available to handle any security incidents that arise within those constituencies, particularly where the incidents have international scope. The establishment of a Romanian team means that most countries connected to the GÉANT2 network will now have incident handling procedures.

The Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association has issued a Call for Proposals today, Tuesday 23 September 2008, to procure a managed Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) server certificate service. This will prolong the existing TERENA Server Certificate Service (SCS), which provides the European education and research community with SSL server certificates that are recognised by popular web browsers, mobile devices and other user applications.