OpenText’s CE 25.2: A Cloud-Ready Identity Lifecycle for Education

As educational institutions continue to evolve their digital platforms, it is becoming increasingly important for them to properly manage their digital footprint. The dawning of the remote learning model has fractured an already complex environment further. Institutions must enhance their management platforms to keep pace with the evolving digital landscape. 

One area of particular concern is identity lifecycle management (ILM). In educational environments, identities can range from teachers and students to alumni and faculty. This complicates an already complex identity model for many educational institutions. OpenText™ Cybersecurity’s CE 25.2 is an excellent solution to this problem. Cloud-ready, it streamlines ILM across educational environments.

By providing policy-driven controls and seamless automation, CE 25.2 integrates smoothly with cloud solutions. As educational institutions continue to grow, adopting more services and expanding remote learning platforms, ILM is no longer an option, but rather a necessity.

The Identity Challenge in Education

For educational institutions, there are several unique challenges associated with identity management. The most significant include:

• High user turnover: The student body is fluid. Students enroll and graduate throughout the year. The same can be said for teaching positions as well.
• Multiple affiliations: This is of particular concern since user roles may overlap across departments and institutions. In many instances, a single user may have multiple roles within the digital environment, such as student, alum, or student teacher.
• Decentralized data sources: In most educational digital environments, identity data is scattered across multiple systems. This information could be part of the learning management system architecture while also residing in HR and student information systems.
• Dynamic access requirements: An important aspect of identity management is the ability to evolve roles and access privileges as users change courses and departments.

When attempting to manage this complex issue with outdated tools, your institution is vulnerable to security risks and operational inefficiencies.

What Is OpenText’s CE 25.2?

There are a number of enhancements OpenText’s CE 25.2 provides that are a perfect fit for educational environments. Some of the features include:

Cloud-Native Architecture

Designed to operate in multi-cloud environments, it provides identity management policies that extend to cloud platforms (AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure) as well as mobile platforms.

Why does it matter for education? As educational environments continue to migrate to cloud-based tools like Microsoft 365 and other cloud-based LMS platforms, it is vital to provide consistent identity governance for all platforms.

Automated Identity Lifecycle Management

Recent updates offer automated ILM capabilities. These include:

• Onboarding: This allows user accounts for students and employees to be automatically created based on specific, pre-defined policies.
• Role changes: Updates permissions as users move to different majors or departments. This is also the case when employees change jobs.
• Offboarding: Automating the process when users leave by removing access and archiving user data.

Access Controls

CE 25.2 offers attribute-based access control (ABAC). This replaces traditional role-based access control (RBAC) frameworks. 

Student Information Systems (SIS) Integration

With APIs and out-of-the-box connectors, CE 25.2 can seamlessly integrate with Ellucian Banner, PowerSchool, and PeopleSoft Campus Solutions. 

Scalability

Offering unparalleled scalability, CE 25.2 empowers end-users and administrators by providing:

• Self-service functionality for password resets and profile updates.
• Delegated administration with role-based controls that allows department heads, IT helpdesk personnel, and HR staff to better serve students.

Security Benefits

Not only does CE 25.2 provide operational improvements, but it also enhances security capabilities through:

• Audit and compliance: Providing audit logs for all identity and access events that meet HIPAA, FERPA, and GDPR mandates.
• Detection: Behavioral logging can flag unusual user patterns to ensure system security.
• Segregation of duties (SoD): This feature enables institutions to properly manage any user having multiple roles with different access levels for each.

The Future of Educational Environments

Educational institutions will continue to evolve with the ever-changing technology landscape. As educational institutions continue to adopt blended learning models, remote administration, and global enrollment, identity governance will only grow in importance. 

By adopting identity lifecycle platforms, institutions will be able to:

• Provide greater agility for onboarding and offboarding of users.
• Limit risk through automated policy enforcement.
• Regain lost control over all multi-cloud environments.

Continual Evolution

With OpenText CE 25.2, institutions can properly manage their associated digital identities across multi-cloud environments. By providing a native cloud-integrated platform, CE 25.2 enables institutions to adopt policy-driven, automated solutions regardless of the complexity of their academic environment.

With the rise in cyber threats and stricter privacy considerations, CE 25.2 provides a powerful tool for educational institutions, securing their ecosystems while offering agility to leaders through a long-term strategic solution to identity management.

Contact Concensus Technologies to discover how CE 25.2 can streamline and strengthen identity management in your school or district.