Securing a loosely-coupled web-based eLearning ecosystem combining open standards

One of the outcomes of the EU-funded iTEC project is the design and the development of a complete eLearning ecosystem, from the design of pedagogical scenarios to their concrete implementation in a Learning Management System, through instantiation of required technical artefacts. The proposed architecture is loosely-coupled and relies on W3C widgets, mashup platforms and other autonomous components, which raise several security issues. This paper reports about the solution that has been implemented to manage user authentication and authorization in such a highly distributed environment, through the combination of various open standards. The proposed approach is based on a survey ran among european teachers about their practices in terms of user credentials usage and sharing.