Okta in Higher Ed: Integrations to Help Campus Users Securely Connect to Anything

We’re very excited to take part in the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference this week. It’s where IT professionals and technology providers, across the diverse higher education landscape, come together to discuss solutions to the IT challenges facing higher ed institutions.

Higher education institutions have dynamic user populations, from applicants, students, and alumni, to faculty, staff, visitors, and volunteers. They all need different levels of access to a wide variety of cloud and on-premises technologies. And, every semester, thousands of users require new access rights—from student to alumnus, for example. Still other users may fall into multiple categories, like grad students who are also teachers’ assistants. Despite all this complexity, IT teams in higher ed are tasked with providing secure anytime, anywhere access to authorized users, from any device.

Against the backdrop of dynamic campus user populations, higher ed institutions also face the same IT challenges and paradigms as many enterprises:

• disappearing network perimeters
• increasing credential-based attacks attempting to steal sensitive data
• the desire to embrace the cloud for speed and agility, while simultaneously connecting to on-premises resources
• the need to automate IT processes, so IT can shift focus from manual tasks to other value-driving activities

That’s a big job for campus IT teams! Okta is here to help. That’s why we’ve partnered with other technology leaders to help campuses securely connect their users to the campus resources they need, including the following list:

Okta + N2N Illuminate
Okta and N2N Illuminate make it easy to automate lifecycle management across student, faculty, and staff lifecycle events. N2N’s Illuminate is a gateway that pulls user data from Student Information Systems (SIS) like Ellucian’s Colleague and Banner, Oracle’s Peoplesoft, and more, and sends it to Okta’s Universal Directory. Schools update user data on their information systems as roles change, and these changes are mirrored in UD and into downstream applications connected to Okta, so access permissions automatically reflect each person’s evolving status. This means that even as roles change, campus users have easy, secure access to the resources they are authorized for, whenever they need them. Get the details of this partnership here.

Okta + Unicon Federation Gateway
For organizations federating with InCommon and/or other eduGAIN federated services, the Okta Federation Gateway by Unicon allows them to use Okta as the Identity Provider, while taking full advantage of federation capabilities. This service is offered and managed in the cloud by Unicon, Inc., a leading EdTech consulting and digital services company specializing in open source applications that support and enhance teaching and learning.

Okta + Proofpoint
Campus resources often contain sensitive data that attackers try to steal, such as research, PHI, PII, and more. Increasingly, attackers are using phishing and other credential-based attacks to attempt to gain unauthorized access and exploit this sensitive data. Okta and Proofpoint provide unparalleled visibility and adaptive controls on a higher education institution’s most targeted users. Proofpoint identifies those at-risk users, or Very Attacked Persons (VAPs), based on threat type, target, and sophistication. Through an API integration, Proofpoint then pushes this list of users to a group in Okta to enforce stronger security controls. Together, Okta and Proofpoint work to provide better visibility and more granular security policies for those users who need it most. Get the details of this partnership here.

Okta + SailPoint
Together, Okta and SailPoint enable higher education institutions to seamlessly leverage automated access and governance controls. This solution provides secure, policy-based self-service access to all data files and apps needed by students, faculty, staff, alumni, and all other campus users. Campus IT departments get complete visibility and centralized control, ensuring that all user access is properly authenticated, and that their entitlements are appropriate for their current role(s). This access is frequently certified, allowing higher education institutions to maintain a secure and compliant infrastructure.

A Trusted Partner in Higher Ed
Intrigued? Click the link to see why higher ed institutions such as the University of Notre Dame, San Jose State University, St. Edward’s University, Ursinus College, Oklahoma Wesleyan University, and Maryville University, all trust Okta to help protect campus user identities. To learn more about our recent innovations such as DynamicScale and SecurityInsights, head over here.

Attending EDUCAUSE Annual Conference this week? Find us! Stop by the Okta booth #406, where we would be happy to sign you up for a customized demo! To learn more about Okta for education and our special pricing for educational institutions, visit our higher education website.