Technology has been an integral part of the education industry, even before the onset of the pandemic. However, the shift from traditional classrooms to online courses, virtual classrooms, and digital textbooks has taken place at a rapid pace since 2020. This transition to the digital world has widened opportunities, but it has also opened avenues for cyberattacks and compliance violations.
Identity governance and administration (IGA) is a framework that can help educational institutions monitor user identities and ensure that the right users have the right access to resources. An IGA solution can help you protect sensitive data, manage diverse user groups, and ensure seamless access to resources.
Why you need an IGA solution
According to a report by CISA, educational institutions were among the primary targets of ransomware groups. These attacks often lead to data breaches and affect the day-to-day operations of the institutions. In 2023, CISA also released the Protecting Our Future: Partnering to Safeguard K–12 organizations from Cybersecurity Threats report that includes recommendations and resources to help prevent cybersecurity incidents.
Strengthening your defenses against cyberattacks can seem like a daunting task. But a comprehensive identity IGA solution, like ManageEngine ADManager Plus, can address a variety of issues and automate many manual processes. Continue reading to find out the various cybersecurity concerns that ADManager Plus can help you with.
How ADManager Plus can help
Ensuring data security
Educational institutions deal with sensitive data such as student records, personal information, and financial data. Unauthorized access to such data can lead to issues such as security breaches, data leaks, and privacy violations. Additionally, protecting this information is required to maintain and comply with various regulations.
ManageEngine ADManager Plus offers role-based access control (RBAC) to ensure that only authorized personnel have access to such sensitive data. You can create custom roles with specific permissions and assign them to staff members, such as teachers, administrators, or IT support, automatically granting them the appropriate level of access. User creation templates can be customized for different roles to streamline the onboarding process, ensuring that the necessary attributes, like department, class, or grade, are automatically updated. Additionally, you can use the orchestration feature to ensure that these attributes are updated automatically whenever there is a change in the user’s role, department, title, or other relevant factors. ADManager Plus also lets you create customizable access certification campaigns to keep an eye on the access permissions given to the users and groups in your educational institution.
Streamlining user and access management
Educational institutions usually consists of a diverse user base. It includes students, teachers, staff, and even parents. Each of these user groups will require different access permissions to data and resources. Managing all the users as well as varying levels of access manually can be difficult, time-consuming, and prone to errors.
ADManager Plus lets you automate user provisioning and deprovisioning and streamline access management. Easily create event-driven automation profiles that will on-board and off-board users after a trigger event. Provide permissions to the users and streamline the periodic review of the access privileges given.
Compliance and reporting
Just like every other industry, the education industry also has to comply with certain regulatory requirements, such as FERPA, the GLBA, the PCI DSS, and the HEOA. ADManager Plus can help institutions stay compliant with regulations and internal policies with detailed, preconfigured reports. Schedule these reports to automatically generate at specified times and monitor all the user activities in your environment.
Investing in an IGA solution like ManageEngine ADManager Plus can help secure your institution against cyberattacks and prevent data breaches. It strengthens security, ensures compliance and streamlines user management while reducing IT workload. Want to check out how ADManager Plus can help secure your journey of digital transformation? Download a free, 30-day trial of the product or schedule a personalized demo to see how we can help you.
