TriCipher, Inc. provides strong authentication and identity management technologies to protect web applications and enterprise portals, the people that use them, and the business processes that flow through them against fraud and identity theft. The myOneLogin service from TriCipher combines strong authentication, single sign-on and federation as an on-demand service.
As a school that specializes in science and applied learning, St. Michael's RC in Stockton-on-Tees in Northern England is always looking for ways to apply emerging technologies to support the educational experience. With more than 800 students, aged 11-16, St. Michael's has been exploring and expanding its use of Google Apps in education for more than a year.
Challenge
According to Damien Kelly, Head of E-Learning for St. Michael's, the students are enthusiastic adopters of Google apps. Students use Apps to collaborate with other students and exchange work with their teachers, without printing, uploading and sending documents back and forth. Teachers can easily provide feedback and guide student work in progress as it happens rather than days afterwards. And, Google Apps completely eliminates the "I left the project at home" excuse.
As St. Michaels' extended Google Apps to handle secure file sharing of confidential information about students, Kelly looked for ways to strengthen the security around access to Google Apps. Says Kelly, "I feel confident that the data stored in Google Apps is secure, as Google adheres to the EU's Safe Harbour framework. But I worried about access to that data being protected only by a single username and password. Access security was my concern."
Solution
Kelly found myOneLogin on the Google Apps Marketplace. Says Kelly, "myOneLogin was easy to integrate with Google Apps and required no special configuration. It blew away the competition."
myOneLogin Secure Single Sign-on adds flexible multi-factor authentication to the Google Apps login. Says Kelly, "We loved the fact that the myOneLogin account was automatically created and bound to the Google Apps account the first time you used it. And the children were able to use it easily." The school soon standardized on myOneLogin for all of its Google Apps accounts.
Results
St. Michael's takes advantage of the different levels of strong authentication available within the solution. St. Michael's is using VeriSign VIP Access for Mobile software, which is tightly integrated with myOneLogin, to create one-time passwords for myOneLogin access on smart phones for teachers and staff.
Using myOneLogin with Google Apps addresses the school's concerns about protecting access to confidential student information. Says Kelly, "I know our information is secure within Google Apps. Using myOneLogin, I am confident that access is secure as well."
