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department, whether part of the same institutional system or a separate university or college. The spokes tap Okta’s Universal Directory for storing information about the user profile and group. The Org2Org connector enables spokes to share user profiles with the hub or other spokes, allowing SSO and multi-factor authentication to work across all shared applications.
Each campus can marry its own Active Directory repository on one side of the hub with the advantages of SSO, MFA and provisioning on the other side, giving users efficient and secure access to college or university applications — both their own and those of their institutional partners.
Lightening the Load
The benefits are numerous. Nailing down IAM makes login frictionless. The result is that students spend more time on learning instead of chasing after IT help. IT spends less time provisioning users, configuring applications to work with certain profile attributes, pursuing investigations and maintaining a fleet of dedicated IAM servers.
Just as importantly, an Identity Cloud helps schools keep pace with the fluid nature of user identities by taking a more meaningful view of the full identity lifecycle — the student who’s a learner as well as an intern one day; a graduate and alumnus
the next; and then a master’s student, part-time professor
and donor. The use of a centralized user repository provides enhanced visibility and useful insights on what’s happening and when across the entire user lifecycle. Integrations with new applications and gateways or new groups go much faster. And institutions can manage user identities at scale, rather than on a one-off basis.
Nobody is having an easy time on campuses these days. But students are getting hit the hardest. Investing in efforts to simplify and secure their digital identities and make them more effective as learners will see the biggest payoff. That starts with adoption of a robust Identity Cloud.
Ryan Schaller serves as a customer identity and access management (CIAM) specialist for Okta, with expertise in higher education and healthcare.
This article is provided for informational purposes only. For legal advice regarding your organization’s compliance needs, please consult your organization’s legal department. Okta makes no representations, warranties or other assurances regarding the content of this article. Information regarding Okta’s contractual assurances to its customers can be found at okta.com/agreements.
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