access management Archives

The urgent need for Identity & Access Management at Universities and Educational Institutions

Cyber threats can affect any educational setting, from elementary schools to universities, whether online or brick-and-mortar. Limited resources, budget constraints, outdated software, and inadequate security systems, cause some of the biggest risks.

Education ranks as the fifth most targeted industry for security breaches in the United States, with more than 1600 publicly disclosed cyberattacks on schools between 2016 and 2022. Just last year, a security lapse in India’s Education Ministry app, Diksha, exposed millions of students’ and teachers’ personally identifying information due to an unprotected cloud server storing the data.

With the increasing adoption of technology in education, and even more so after the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for Identity & Access Management (IAM) systems is now vital for security and productivity at educational institutions.

But first, what are the unique challenges in IAM for educational institutions?

Diverse user base

Educational institutions cater to a diverse range of users including students, faculty, staff, administrators, and sometimes even external collaborators. Managing identities and access rights for such a diverse user base can be complex.

Outdated IT systems

Limited IT budgets result in legacy systems that are challenging to maintain, costly to fix, and may lack effective customer service. They also pose security risks due to outdated infrastructure. Users with multiple roles face challenges as each role is treated as a separate ID, leading to multiple credentials and fragmented access.

Remote learning

The rise of remote learning and the prevalence of BYOD or Bring Your Own Device policies have introduced additional difficulties in managing identities and securing access to resources. Educational institutions must ensure secure access to resources from any location and on any device while maintaining data privacy and security.

Data breach risks

Educational institutions handle large amounts of personal and sensitive information, including academic records, personal information, and research data making them prime targets for data breaches. Maintaining data security is essential for building trust and preventing breaches or leaks.

Changing user roles

Colleges and universities frequently onboard and offboard thousands of new users or new students each semester, each of whom require access to university resources before arriving on campus. Also, access for graduating students needs to be disabled promptly. Also, colleges handle transient users on a massive scale, including students taking semesters off and contingent faculty.

Manual provisioning and de-provisioning

Manual provisioning and de-provisioning of user access leads to high costs, security threats, and help desk overload. Manual authorization workflows for user access are prone to delays, mistakes, and compliance/security concerns. IT staff are responsible for frequently authorizing access requests, leading to inefficiencies. Also, there is a lack of auditing.

No integration with cloud-based platforms

Educational institutions face challenges integrating IAM systems with cloud-based platforms. The absence of dedicated IT help desk teams results in an increased workload for IT staff to resolve password and account unlock requests.

How can IAM address these challenges?

Centralized management and access

IAM solutions provide a centralized platform for managing user identities, authentication, and authorization. This helps to streamline user provisioning, de-provisioning, and access management across the institution, reducing administrative overhead.

For users too, with a single sign-on provided by an IAM platform, all applications are brought onto a single platform. This eliminates the hassle of multiple passwords and logins and makes the login process fast and effortless.

Automated provisioning and de-provisioning

A comprehensive IAM solution like Akku automates the process of provisioning and de-provisioning user accounts based on predefined rules and policies.

This ensures users have timely access to resources they need and access is revoked promptly upon role changes or departure from an institution, reducing the risk of unauthorized access. Also, IAM solutions implement role-based access. This granular control ensures users have access only to resources necessary for their job functions.

Learn-from-anywhere security

IAM solutions often go beyond user permissions to access applications. For example, Akku offers extensive access management features that let you permit access to your institution’s resources only from specific whitelisted network IP addresses, or only from whitelisted devices.

Suspicious login attempts can also be identified and flagged when a user attempts to log in from an unfamiliar location or at an unexpected time.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA)

Many IAM solutions offer MFA capabilities, adding an extra layer of security beyond passwords. By requiring users to authenticate using multiple factors such as passwords, biometrics, or one-time codes, MFA helps prevent unauthorized access even if credentials are compromised.

Akku makes implementation of MFA effortless and cost-effective with a range of authentication factors to choose from, including passwordless authentication.

Integration with LMS and other education-specific platforms

IAM solutions integrate with LMS platforms and other applications used in educational settings, which allows for single sign-on (SSO) capabilities, enabling users to access multiple resources with a single set of credentials, thereby enhancing user experience and productivity.

With Akku, the process of integration is effortless with plug-and-play connectors to over 500 popular applications.

Auditing and compliance reporting

An end-to-end IAM solution like Akku provides robust auditing and reporting capabilities, allowing institutions to monitor user activity, track access privileges, and generate compliance reports. Akku’s Smart Analytics dashboard provides clear visibility across the institution’s users as well as intelligent insights on unused application licenses, provisioned user access, and more.

IAM solutions can help educational institutions improve security, streamline administrative processes, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, enabling a safer learning environment for students and staff. Akku’s IAM solutions are tailored to meet these unique challenges, so reach out to us today so we can help you stay secure.

The What, Why, and How of Deprovisioning

What’s deprovisioning?

Simply put, deprovisioning is the opposite of provisioning. While provisioning is carried out when an employee joins the organization, deprovisioning needs to be carried out when an employee exits.

Deprovisioning involves revoking the user’s access to the organization’s data, applications and devices. It is the final stage of the corporate user lifecycle that begins with on-boarding and provisioning.

Why is it important?

Provisioning plays an important role in an organization’s productivity by getting new users the access they require to perform their role in the company.

Deprovisioning, on the other hand, plays a critical role in security and compliance. When an employee moves on, it is vital that they no longer have access to the organization’s data or applications, because this would leave the door open to misuse.

The consequences can range from data theft to malware insertion, leaks of confidential information to compliance violations. Each of these can have a major negative impact on the company’s finances as well as reputation.

How does it work?

Most organizations make use of multiple applications in their operations. Manually remembering to revoke access from a user when they exit the company can therefore be tedious, time consuming, and can easily result in human error as well.

A key requirement for an efficient and effective provisioning and deprovisioning process, therefore, is to bring control over access to all of the organization’s applications and data onto a single platform. This is typically achieved through the use of a Single Sign-On (SSO) solution – which is typically one of the major components of an Identity and Access Management solution.

With an SSO in place, the company’s admins can exercise control over user access from a single place, making the process fast, accurate and convenient. By removing the user’s account in one centralized dashboard, their access to all applications and data is then automatically revoked.

Akku is an enterprise identity and access management solution by CloudNow that helps companies manage the corporate user lifecycle more efficiently – from provisioning all the way to deprovisioning. Talk to us today to see how Akku could help your business address security and compliance issues arising from sub-optimal deprovisioning processes.

Managing Identity and Access in the Workplace

Identity and access management, sometimes simply known as identity management, refers to the IT function of maintaining security through the management of digital identities. In a workplace, this includes provisioning employees with accounts to all applications and platforms they will be using for their official tasks, assigning them with the right kind of permissions to each of these applications/platforms, and making sure that the right people have the right access to the right resources and data. Continue reading Managing Identity and Access in the Workplace

Overcoming the Challenges of the Media Industry With Identity

When the digital revolution started, media companies were among the first ones to embrace it. Today, most media companies create content targeted exclusively at online subscribers on digital platforms, pivoting their efforts to become more user-friendly for a digital audience.

In order to convert free digital users into paid users, it is also important to effectively profile them and target the right ads to the right users. Therefore, it becomes crucial to learn more about the users logging in to view media content – whether on an online magazine or a video streaming platform. At the same time, user information that is collected online needs to be safeguarded and the methods used for data handling must adhere to strict regulations. Continue reading Overcoming the Challenges of the Media Industry With Identity

The Importance of Single Sign-on for Educational Institutions

Let’s admit it: schools and universities today are not what they used to be back when we were growing up. Digitization has swept over almost every aspect of educational institutions. Classrooms have become “smart”, with blackboards being replaced or supplemented by LED screens. Students can simply log in to portals from where they can access information about grades, access lessons from learning apps, and more. Teachers don’t use physical attendance registers today; they mark the daily attendance of their students on tablets – data from which triggers automatic, customized messages to the parents of students who are absent from class.

With such revolutionary change taking over educational institutions, they are also under the rising threat of becoming the target of hackers. Therefore, it is important to ensure enhanced security across the network to prevent student and parent information from being exploited. What’s more, there are cases of students themselves becoming hackers these days – attempting to manipulate grades, using their fellow students’ information to bully them online, and engaging in other malicious activities.

Here are some ways in which a single sign-on solution can not only enhance security but also improve the efficiency of administrators in your educational institution.

Easy Provisioning and Deprovisioning

Every year, a set of students graduate and a new set of students are enrolled. This means that creating accounts and providing access to student portals is a never-ending process. More importantly, denying access to a student who no longer studies at the institution must not be overlooked.

With an SSO, administrators can view – in a single dashboard – all of the apps related to a particular user account and take action quickly and effectively without having to provision/deprovision accounts individually across apps or portals.

Instant Access to all Apps

A survey conducted in the USA showed that 25% of class-time is spent in troubleshooting and teachers trying to help students log in to their respective learning applications. In most cases, the use of multiple applications, and therefore multiple credentials, is the main problem here.

A single sign-on solution, as the name suggests, eliminates the need for multiple credentials, and with it, reduces the time taken to remember and correctly enter them. This also reduces the number of stray passwords, prevents users from writing down passwords and using other methods to remember credentials that are prone to compromise, and also reduces the time taken in resetting forgotten passwords.

Secure Password Policy Enforcement

Students of today may be sharp, but technology is sharper and acts as a double-edged sword. This is why, when it comes to protecting your network from brute-force attacks and other modern security threats, a strong password policy is essential. After all, a compromised password of a student could compromise the security of the entire network in more ways than one.

An SSO typically acts as the identity provider (IdP) to all the applications or portals used within the institution and, therefore, can be used to set up and enforce a strong password policy. This will ensure that passwords created by users of the institution’s applications meet a certain set of requirements with regard to length and complexity.

SSO and Beyond – Akku

Akku, by CloudNow, is an identity and access management solution that includes a powerful SSO functionality. But SSO is only one of many in a slew of features packed into this IAM solution.

Akku can also help you ensure safer interactions on the internet with filters, harness the power of YouTube for teaching/learning, use multi-factor authentication to restrict access to confidential data and more.

For more information on what Akku can do for your institution, get in touch today!