One of the largest private universities on the East Coast was looking for a solution that would replace the manual, error-prone process of managing physical access permissions for all campus identities with a much easier-to-use, more secure system. One that would autonomously manage student, staff, and visitor identities throughout their lifecycle. And one that would put the power of access control into the very hands of those identities for an improved user and administrator experience, ensuring compliance reporting across physical security operations.

The Challenge

The University was using an outdated legacy access assignment system, which was largely manual, that couldn’t automate the physical identity management processes for students, faculty, visitors, and staff. It also struggled to seamlessly integrate with various Physical Access Control Systems (PACS), Human Resources (HR), and contractor management systems. Furthermore, it was a rigid, hard-coded system and wasn’t future-proof to handle the university’s expected growth and constant change in access policies.

The combination of these challenges could not be managed within their existing systems without requiring lots of manual updates, introducing higher costs, risk, operational inefficiency, and security vulnerabilities. Similar challenges are not uncommon for most large universities that oversee an ever-changing population. As such, this all-too-familiar problem warranted a field-proven solution.

The Vector Flow PIAM & VIM Solution

The University decided to switch to a modern Physical Identity and Access Management (PIAM) and Visitor Identity Management (VIM) approach for students and faculty. This allowed the University to overcome previous access challenges by enabling:

  • Automatic issuing or removal of ID cards and access permissions for all staff, faculty, and students
  • Swift, remote access request approvals
  • The University community to manage their own identities via self-service
  • Visitor management provisioning across the University, including temporary access to student dormitories
  • Comprehensive compliance with physical access and occupancy controls

The PIAM solution provided effectively lowered the risks and costs associated with the manual management of identities, ultimately providing a better experience for students and staff, streamlining processes and security, and increasing efficiency. It currently handles over 150,000 identities, supports 300 administrative users, and grows each year.

Choosing the Right Partner

After reviewing different solution providers, the university partnered with Vector Flow to implement their Physical Identity and Access Management (PIAM) and Visitor Identity Management (VIM) applications. Starting from day one, the new PIAM application centralized business processes and security, took control over 150,000 campus identities and further supported an additional 700 IT, facility, and security administrators. Integration capabilities then brought together student and faculty data streams from various HR, student management, and other business systems to comprehensively manage each identity. The platform extended self-service solutions and identity management to the entire university community, improving the access experience for visitors and students alike.

This top-tier university also wanted a more comprehensive way to handle access based on student behavior and Vector Flow presented an innovative approach. The Vector Flow solution dynamically adjusts access based on individual behavior or event incidents. For example, if students violate lab rules, they may be temporarily banned from lab access unless cleared by the professor or the lab owner. Likewise, if a student or the student’s visitors break dorm rules, they could both lose access privileges, limiting future dorm access for visitors and restricting certain privileges for the student within the campus. All this is configurable based on the University’s policies. This behavioral approach ensures a more customized and responsive access management system.

How Your University Can Benefit from PIAM & VIM Solutions

  • Automation: Automated access provisioning and de-provisioning of clearances for cardholders eliminates many of the manual, error-prone processes conducted under legacy PACS. A playbook-driven automation platform ensures that student, faculty, and staff access governance is both 100% automated and scalable to grow with the changing learning environment.
    • Enable customization for managing individuals with non-standard roles, maintain a banned persons list, and implement access controls to restrict unauthorized access and approvals.
  • Improved Visitor and User Experience: From self-service visitor kiosks to mobile access permission requests, the Vector Flow PIAM and VIM solutions cater to the needs of all university identities. Visitor management functionality is effectively incorporated into the Vector Flow system to provide a seamless administration and approval process.
  • Data Integration: Integration with leading PACS, HR, vendor management, and additional business systems ensures that higher learning institutions utilize clean, reliable access data and also help administrators make sense of this data through actionable insights. The Vector Flow system is also designed to handle the year-over-year growth many universities are currently facing.
  • Compliance: Streamline compliance preparation with automated tasks, reducing the workload for audit owners. Quickly create and deploy user-friendly audit playbooks, and access industry-standard reports for comprehensive compliance management.

Future-Proof Your University’s Access

By modernizing its Physical Identity and Access Management systems, this university not only optimized its operations but also greatly enhanced the experience of every individual accessing its facilities. Reach out to us to discover how we can help improve the visitor and student experience at your university while improving operational efficiency and security.