Simplify identity management in higher education with Okta and AWS

It’s not so long since IT teams in higher education were viewed primarily as the folks who reset students’ long-forgotten passwords or restarted the projector when it froze during a lecture.

Today, you’re cybersecurity guardians, responsible for protecting a more interconnected infrastructure than ever. The rise of cloud computing and hybrid learning has been a boon to accessibility and collaboration in institutions. Yet it also brings with it increased complexity and risk, heaping the pressure on overstretched IT and security teams.

One challenge is the sheer variety of users accessing college systems. Students, teachers, administrators, guests, researchers, and others require different access to different applications at different times. Their roles and requirements may evolve as they move through the education system. Keeping track of who has access to what is hard work, especially when user identities are fragmented across multiple systems.

These identity siloes also get in the way of a positive student experience. On their first day, learners may be unable to view coursework and assignments simply because they’ve been assigned the wrong permissions. The result? Frustrated students, generating yet more helpdesk tickets — and likely venting their woes on social media, impacting your reputation.

Of course, there’s also the critical issue of security. By their nature, higher education institutions are vulnerable to data breaches. As students and staff come and go, this constantly creates new entry points for attack. Sensitive research data is a prime target for cyber threats and intellectual property theft. In 2023, cyberattacks in the sector cost an average of $3.7 million per institution — money that could be better spent on improving student programs and services. 

While security controls can be put in place, these often add friction to users’ experience. Technology should be a facilitator for students and institutions to achieve their goals, not a blocker. And it can be, with modern identity and access management.

Simplifying the complex with identity

A modern identity solution ties together all aspects of access control, allowing IT teams to manage all Identities in one place, throughout the entire user lifecycle. At the same time, students and staff enjoy secure, frictionless access to the devices, applications, and data sources they need.

With a unified identity strategy, you can close the security gaps created by fragmented systems, allowing you to apply consistent security policies across all your applications and devices. This minimizes the risk of unauthorized access, dramatically reducing your risk of a data breach.

The question for education providers is: Should you build your identity solution yourself, or outsource it? As IT complexity and cyber threats spiral, many are turning to Okta and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide future-proof security and scalability for their identity infrastructure. 

Straight-A identity with Okta 

Okta gives faculty, staff, students, alumni, and customers secure access to the tools they need to do their most important work securely and efficiently while taking the load off IT and security teams.

Okta’s neutral, cloud-based platform makes it simpler to manage role changes, ensuring everyone automatically has the right access to the right resources at the right time. No more manual onboarding and offboarding. Just a single system for enforcing standardized policies across your users, devices, access and applications.

With frictionless access, IT teams spend less time troubleshooting. Take Single Sign On. Instead of multiple logins for various applications, users can log into all their resources with one set of credentials. That’s fewer password reset requests and fewer complaints, leaving you free to focus on what matters.

Okta balances this seamless user experience with advanced security features to protect your sensitive data. Phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication and AI-powered threat monitoring strengthen your defenses against social engineering and other evolving cyber threats, helping to deter intruders and reinforce a Zero Trust security posture.

AWS: Trusted cloud scalability

As your student and staff numbers grow, a cloud-based identity platform is crucial for managing access. This is where Okta’s deep integration with AWS is so powerful. By combining Okta’s advanced identity management with AWS’s global cloud infrastructure, you gain the security, scalability, and flexibility you need, without the high infrastructure costs and maintenance burdens of on-premises systems.

This empowers you to harness the cloud for superior learning experiences–whether that’s high-performance computing and cloud storage for large-scale research projects, AI and data analytics for insights, or reliable hosting for digital learning platforms, like online exams and virtual learning apps.

In summary

With trusted technology in place, you can focus on what truly matters — driving innovation, expanding access, and shaping the future of education. 

Learn more about how Okta and AWS could help transform learning at your organization.