Illinois North Central College has implemented secure multi-factor authentication and single sign-on to its campus-wide applications, including Microsoft Office 365, Blackboard, and Ellucian Colleague. The college has turned to BIO-key International and its PortalGuard Identity as a Solution platform.

BIO-key provides workforce and customer identity and access management solutions that leverage what the company calls Identity-Bound Biometrics. At North Central College in Naperville, IL, the PortalGuard IDaaS platform is expected to secure access to enterprise applications and reduce IT-related expenses.

BIO-key has implemented its solutions at over 200 higher education institutions, including 30 IDaaS customers across 12 states. The company estimates that it is supporting more than 2.5 million students, faculty, staff, administration, and alumni with cloud-based solutions.

Among BIO-key's other university clients is the University of Denver where the platform has met Denver’s requirement for Single Sign-On protocols to support a planned campus portal migration, and to provide a consistent app access experience with integrated self-service capabilities.

PortalGuard's features self-service password reset capabilities, meaning North Central College can solve a significant IT pain point and eliminate related help desk costs.

"Higher education has become an attractive target for cyberattacks, so institutions are seeking highly secure, scalable, and redundant IAM solutions to safeguard both student and institutional data and resources," says Mark Cochran, President of BIO-key – PortalGuard. "The BIO-key security team, with our comprehensive suite of IAM solutions, is uniquely positioned to assist higher-ed institutions with enhancing their information security plans and effectively addressing the challenging risks to institutional security and privacy."