Canadian University of Dubai secures itself with Identity Management Solution

Canadian University of Dubai has deployed an identity and password management solution to enable them better visibility and reporting of processes, management of security, and quick turnaround of password resets and account provisioning down from a period of 24-48 hours to 5 minutes.

The Canadian University of Dubai faced a problem at the beginning of each term, especially after the summer vacation when staff and students returned to the campus and had forgotten their passwords which created huge bottlenecks for IT security. Further, to compound this issue, the University had different systems used in different departments, without a central way to manage security roles and the provisioning of accounts. Because of the decentralized and disparate nature of the University’s systems, two connected issues arose.

Firstly, it was time consuming to provision the accounts in the different systems and then to ensure there was no ‘role creep’ that usually resulted in unauthorized added privileges, which become a major security risk. The second, and more pressing issue, was assuring the data integrity of the students and the Canadian University of Dubai.

“Security is more critical than ever because data is the new wealth. We need to protect our brand identity, and we need to protect the students’ data because we hold a lot of student information and we are responsible for protecting that data from internal and external threats. One Identity was very supportive of our security needs, and they were involved in helping us take it to the next step,” explained Mohammad Fayaz, IT Applications Manager, Canadian University of Dubai.

In deciding on a solution for the Canadian University of Dubai, One Identity began with consultations to understand the University’s requirements precisely. “We soon came to understand, that the University would be best served by two of our solutions: The One Identity Manager Solution which is a powerful enterprise provisioning governance solution, and the One Identity Password Manager—a password management solution,” commented Daniel Wright, Sales Director at One Identity.

The implemented solution provided a central repository which made identification of all permissions within different systems across the University possible, drastically cut down on the time taken for problem resolution such as password resetting, provisioning of accounts, and security management from 24-48 hours to five minutes. The solution had the net effect of mitigating security risks by providing the Canadian University of Dubai with better visibility, fast and effective problem resolution, and reporting.

Further, the One Identity solution was easily configured to communicate with the University’s SMS gateway. Security plays an important role in any organization but for a university, any security mishap could negatively affect student enrolment and confidence in the system.

“We have a reputation to safeguard, because we do not want to be just another statistic of an organization that has been hacked. One identity provided us the confidence and capabilities to grow with the product which is important because the product does not end just with the project implementation but is constantly evolving and changing due to the security landscape. We have to be as dynamic and adaptive,” added Fayaz.