Santa Rosa Junior College, University of Guam and Wesley Theological Seminary Leverage BIO-key’s PortalGuard to Address Sophisticated Cybersecurity Threats

WALL, N.J., July 20, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- (NASDAQ: BKYI), an innovative provider of identity and access management (IAM) solutions powered by biometrics, today announced that growth of its IAM footprint in higher education continues to accelerate within North America as well as internationally. Santa Rosa Junior College and prior to BIO-key’s acquisition of PistolStar, Wesley Theological Seminary and the University of Guam, have chosen the PortalGuard solution to combat the more frequent, more sophisticated cybersecurity threats now facing higher education institutions while also improving the access experience for their end-users.

For Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC), providing Single Sign-On (SSO) to the application environment, protected by two-factor authentication, is the main priority for their 21,000 end-users. PortalGuard is tasked with providing secure SSO to applications, including Canvas, G Suite, Escape Online, a custom Student Information System (SIS) application, Microsoft Office 365, and nineteen Shibboleth enabled applications, among others.  Also, with PortalGuard’s flexible two-factor authentication capabilities, the SRJC security team is planning to leverage both a mobile authenticator and YubiKey hardware tokens to secure access for web applications and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).

The IT team at the University of Guam is focused on lowering costs for help desks calls related to password resets and reducing login prompts for their 5,000 end-users accessing enterprise applications.  Since the March 2020 adoption of PortalGuard, it is anticipated that the solution will significantly improve end-user access by providing robust self-service capabilities and secure SSO to applications, including Ellucian Colleague, Moodle and Microsoft Office 365, among others. Strengthening security policies for end-user passwords, along with implementing SSO, means better security for the institution without negatively impacting the user experience.

Wesley Theological Seminary’s IT team has sought an IAM solution that would provide an end-user with a single password across multiple IT systems while enabling the added security and convenience of Single Sign-On.  By using PortalGuard, which it contracted to utilize in March 2020, the Wesley IT team anticipates that it will be able to deliver a unified portal experience to improve access to critical applications for over 600 end-users. For this particular project, PortalGuard has enabled SSO for Microsoft Office 365, Ellucian Colleague & WebAdvisor, Blackboard, and Blackbaud. Additionally, to date the school had been able to secure the self-service password reset process and provide 24x7 self-service capabilities while substantially reducing the number of support calls coming into the help desk.

“Addressing new cybersecurity challenges while improving the end-user access experience is a top priority for most higher education institutions in 2020,” stated Mark Cochran, President, PortalGuard.  “Online learning and work from home, including blended and hybrid scenarios have presented both new security challenges and opportunities to drive digital transformation initiatives forward. PortalGuard’s enterprise solution is uniquely positioned to provide flexible security solutions for higher education that offers significant IAM improvements and lasting value.”

About BIO-key International, Inc. ()

BIO-key is revolutionizing authentication with biometric solutions that enable convenient and secure access to devices, information, applications, and high-value transactions. BIO-key’s software and hardware finger scanning solutions offer secure, user-friendly, and attractively priced alternatives to passwords, PINs, tokens, and security cards, enabling enterprises and consumers to secure their networks and devices as well as their information in the cloud.

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