Virginia Tech became the first university to be certified to assert a "Silver" level of assurance with the InCommon Federation. InCommon, operated by Internet2, provides a secure and privacy-preserving trust fabric for research and higher education, and their partners, in the United States. InCommon operates an identity management federation, as well as a related assurance program. Assurance practices determine the confidence in the accuracy of a user's electronic identity and help mitigate risk for the provider of services within the federation. A service provider in the federation may be another university, a government agency, not-for-profit research centers, or vendor partners. With the silver certification, Virginia Tech has received a higher level of assurance that the user logging into a service is, indeed, that person. For more information, see "News from the Assurance Program" at www.incommon.org.