With around 2,100 Bachelor’s and Master’s students, the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) is one of the leading art academies in Europe. In order to be able to offer both students and internal staff a professional solution for managing identities and access, the ZHdK consulted a security expert to determine an identity and access management system.
The ZHdK ‘s mission statement not only includes the demand for the highest quality of education, but also the provision of an adequate spatial and technical infrastructure. IT is of immense importance both for students and for all employees, as all data on students and lecturers is managed. The university administration systems are closely networked with the IT infrastructure, e.g. in the area of access control, reservation systems or network authentication. The ZHdK saw the need for a professional solution for managing identities and access. To meet this need, ZHdK decided to evaluate an Identity & Access Management (IAM) system in collaboration with the IAM specialists from United Security Providers.
Identity & Access Management becomes unavoidable
Data management at ZHdK is ensured by a powerful university administration system. This system is very closely interlinked with components of the IT infrastructure. This means that not only assessments can be administered, but also indirectly, via synchronization of user data and rights in the Active Directory, access to buildings and rooms, assignment to different network zones of the university network and even rights for access to music practice rooms or state-of-the-art video editing suites can be controlled. However, the options for user-based assignment of organizational data, role profiles or SAP roles were severely limited on the university administration system or simply not possible for specific use cases.
Based on this initial situation, it was clear to the ZHdK that the introduction of an IAM was unavoidable. “Imparting knowledge to our students is the core task of the university. For us in IT, however, the art also lies in protecting the data entrusted to us in the background and incorporating the trends of digitalization, e.g. in the area of online registration for studies,” says Claudia Monstein, Project Manager at the Information Technology Centre.
High demands on the ZHdK’s new IAM – project support from the IAM specialist
The requirements for the ZHdK’s new IAM were very wide-ranging: On the one hand, the new system had to be modern, highly flexible and geared towards the needs of the very agile and creative university operations. At the same time, the IAM also had to be able to store user data securely, manage organizational structures across several academic years and assign user-specific profiles and roles. In addition, a large number of subsystems with different synchronization mechanisms had to be connected. The IAM system also had to fit in with the ZHdK’s strategy (open source, developable, adaptable).
This raised the specific question of which IAM would be the optimal solution for ZHdK’s requirements and use cases. When determining this system, those responsible did not want to do without the view of an IAM and security expert, so they decided to engage United Security Poviders as part of a coaching support for the project.
In joint workshops with the IT managers, the specialist departments, the application developers, the system engineers at ZHdK and United Security Providers, the university’s requirements for an IAM were recorded and structured. By prioritizing these requirements and the resulting findings, ZHdK was able to more clearly identify the focus it wanted to set when selecting a provider. The state of the entire IT service landscape was also taken into consideration, as was United Security Providers’ methodological expertise in the area of IAM design.
Conclusion
With structured coaching, the IT security specialist supported the IAM project at Zurich University of the Arts in gaining an overview of the IAM jungle and integrating all affected organizational units into the process. A suitable provider of a suitable identity and access management solution that meets the required framework conditions was evaluated. “The selection of an IAM provider that was both an open source solution and met the many functional requirements was made easier by the support of United Security Providers,” says Claudia Monstein, project manager at the Information Technology Center.
What about your Identity & Access Management?
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