BIO-key International, an innovative provider of Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions powered by biometrics, has announced that Eastern Florida State College (EFSC) has selected BIO-key’s PortalGuard IAM solution to solve security and user experience challenges with authentication and portal management.
The IT team at EFSC, which has campuses in Cocoa, Melbourne, Palm Bay, Titusville, and an aerospace program at the Kennedy Space Center, needed to replace its existing IAM solution that did not meet the school’s core security requirements. It selected BIO-key for both its extensive IAM security expertise and proven success in the education market.
EFSC required support for both its Ellucian Banner Enterprise Resource Planning system, as its source of authority, and for its two separate Active Directory domains for faculty/staff and for its 30,000 students.
Some key user experience improvements were allowing users to reset expired Active Directory passwords and enabling seamless Single Sign-On (SSO) access to enterprise applications like Office 365, Canvas and Salesforce.
Managing an IAM platform for an evolutionary landscape with an increased focus on distance learning presents secure access and workflow challenges for most higher education institutions.
BIO-key’s PortalGuard provides a complete suite of IAM capabilities that are configurable to address the specific requirements of each customer. PortalGuard also allows a school to brand its portal landing page with its logo, school colors and other unique design elements, providing users with the confidence that they are in a trusted environment.
“IT departments in colleges and universities recognize just how costly inefficient access management can be to the institution,” said Mark Cochran, President, PortalGuard. “Beyond the obvious security vulnerabilities and impact to the user access experience, institutions are witnessing rising support costs as they struggle to manage the onslaught of on-going password reset requests.
“Once the IT team understands how quickly PortalGuard addresses all these challenges in a cost-effective, branded, and easy to use manner, it is usually just a matter of aligning resources to complete purchase and deployment. Based on project scope, production deployments can be accomplished in less than two weeks once the procurement decision is made.”
