Midwestern University Strengthens Passwords and Credentials

Public four-year university in the United States considers Bravura Pass to be the best technology on the market

Empowers Students and Increases Security

Due to our customer's policy, Bravura Security is unable to disclose the university's name. The university, a state supported, four-year university located in the midwestern United States, is dedicated to providing its students, faculty and staff with the technology resources they need to be successful. Like other post secondary institutions, the university needed a simple way for students and staff to change or reset passwords themselves and strengthen strong password policies across all applications and systems.

The Challenge

The beginning of each semester was a time that the university help desk staff dreaded. Over the semester break students and staff had forgotten their passwords. The help desk was inundated both by calls and the workload of creating thousands of accounts for new students. They faced pressure to reduce call volume to the campus help desk and decrease problem resolution time.

"Our students and staff depend on our IT infrastructure so it's important that we keep them up and running at all times," says Director of Information Services. "The backlog of issues at the start of each semester created huge problems."

Frustrated by notoriously long delays to resolve password problems and gain access to systems, students and staff resorted to choosing trivial passwords that were easy to remember. That inherently meant passwords were also easy to crack and increased security risk for the university.

They needed a solution that would reduce the total number of passwords that users had to remember plus provide users with the ability to solve their own password reset problems without calling the help desk.

The Solution

"We wanted a password management solution that we could depend on to provide fast and reliable password reset and synchronization across all of our systems," says Director.

They chose Bravura Pass to address these problems. Bravura Pass, a scalable solution that is both intuitive and easy to use, includes powerful features, such as password synchronization, self-service and assisted password reset.

When students or staff change their password, Bravura Pass automatically updates that user's password on every other system where they have a login ID. This allows users to remember and regularly change one strong password, rather than an assortment of static and easily guessed passwords. The net result: fewer password problems.

"The beginning of each semester is no longer intimidating to our support staff." says Director. "Our help desk now receives a manageable number of incoming calls. Everyone's satisfaction levels have considerably increased since we rolled out Bravura Pass."

Users who forget their passwords are able to authenticate themselves by answering personal questions or using a hardware token and can then reset their own passwords-all without calling the help desk.

Remaining password-related help desk calls are resolved using a Bravura Pass help desk interface, which reduces problem resolution time to about one minute.

The Outcome

The university has recognized significant benefits since deploying Bravura Pass, including a substantial reduction in calls to the help desk, enhanced security and increased student, faculty and staff satisfaction.

"Bravura Pass is fast, reliable and extremely easy to use," says Director. "The response from our users has been extremely positive."

Bravura Pass helped users more effectively manage their credentials. Federated single sign-on, reduced the frequency of login prompts. Synchronized passwords meant users had fewer to remember. Enforcing a strong password policy strengthened security all around. Password Manager reduced the login burden on users with fewer passwords and fewer prompts while improving security and lowering IT support costs.

"The implementation was streamlined and the self-contained approach was remarkable," said Director. "We consider Bravura Pass to be the best technology in the market and we have had a very positive experience working with Bravura Security. It is very clear that Bravura Security takes pride in their solutions and in the service that they provide."

Bravura Security at a Glance

Bravura Security is the only industry leader delivering identity and privileged access management across a single platform to ease implementation as your IAM and PAM roadmaps evolve.

"Our help desk now receives a manageable number of incoming calls. The beginning of each semester is no longer intimidating to our support staff. Their satisfaction levels have considerably increased since we rolled out Bravura Pass."

— Director of Information Services