Top Ways the Education Industry Could Benefit from Identity and Access Management Software

Free up time of IT employees
IT and helpdesk employees are often bogged down with the monotonous task of account creation. Though it is not difficult, it is extremely time consuming for staff who could be working on more technical projects. Minnetonka Public Schools IT department was dealing with this situation. They had developed their own in house solution for account management but still had to handle account creations manually, which was time consuming. The process consisted of data specialists retrieving information from students, employees and parents and then relaying it to the IT staff, who would manually manage the accounts. With this process, four to five employees were often involved in creating one account. Minnetonka decided to automate their account management process so that accounts are provisioned automatically for students, employees and teachers without much human intervention. By automating the process, they were able to easily free up the time of three full time employees. Now only one person has to touch account creation.

Reduce user pollution and keep systems up to date
With so much movement of students each semester, it is often difficult for the IT department to keep systems up to date with current student information and accounts. It is also time consuming to disable all accounts for students upon graduation and, as a result, many accounts were left active. This was the problem that Fitchburg State College was facing. They had over 40,000 accounts in Active Directory which did not accurately reflect their actual environment. Although they attempted to go through and delete inactive accounts, they realized this was not a good method since they were inadvertently deleting active users, such as students continuing on to graduate studies. By automating their account management, when a terminated or graduated flag is set in the SIS, the account is automatically disabled according to preset rules. The IT department can now easily ensure that there is not user pollution and their accounts are always up to date with the correct information and accounts.

Reduce helpdesk tickets
According to a survey conducted by Tools4ever, one of the most common helpdesk calls is for resetting a user password. This issue does not require much skill from the helpdesk employee but can be very time consuming when they are receiving many password reset calls a day. Not only do they have to deal with password calls, but, especially in the beginning of the school year, students and employees are calling due to their accounts being incorrect or not being able to access the systems and applications. Pinellas County School District was one such school facing these issues. The IT department was spending a lot of time correcting account problems, and was receiving a large amount of password reset calls especially after a summer break. To resolve these issues, Pinellas implemented a self service reset password solution so end users can easily and securely reset their own passwords by answering a series of challenge questions they had previously enrolled with. To deal with their many account issues, they also implemented an automated account management solution. Now when an account is created in Active Directory, it automatically populates the parent portal, student information system and any other systems as required, eliminating a tedious and potentially error prone manual process.

Always have correct access to accounts
Students and teachers often complete work for classes after administration school hours and need to access certain applications and systems. If they forget their password and are locked out of their account, they cannot access the resources they need since the helpdesk is not available after school hours. Harrison College has 13 campuses and also offers several online courses which can start as late as 10 PM. With the helpdesk only being available until 5 PM, users that had issues with passwords after closing time could not resolve them until the next day. By implementing a self service reset password solution, Harrison was able to provide users the option to safely and securely reset their own passwords without having to contact the helpdesk. This easily eliminated the issue of having password issues after the helpdesk closed and allowed users to quickly reset their passwords and continue with their studies.


Ensure proper access rights
In schools, students often need certain access rights depending on what grade they are in or if they have certain privileges. At North Hunterdon-Voorhees School District this was specifically the case concerning student access to the internet. In order for students to be allowed to access the internet they need to have a permission form filled out by their parent. The HR department would then have to add the student to the correct security group. This process was handled manually and was time consuming and often resulted in error. By implementing a user management solution, the registrar now simply checks a box on a student’s profile, and internet access is granted. This has saved the district an enormous amount of time and ensured that students have the correct access rights.


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