SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., April 14, 2022 – Clever, the most widely used and trusted digital learning platform in U.S. K-12 schools, today announced an expanded identity management offering with new support for Active Directory, used by thousands of districts to manage users’ access to software applications and devices. Clever IDM helps school districts automate provisioning and management of their Active Directory and Google Workspace user accounts, saving districts time while helping to improve account security.
Clever Identity Management (IDM) was built to address growing school district concerns about cybersecurity threats in K-12 education that have accompanied rising edtech use. The last few years have increasingly shown school districts to be a target for cybercriminals posing a distinct challenge for overtaxed IT teams.
With Clever IDM, student, teacher, and staff accounts are automatically created once they’re added to the district student information system, meaning every user has access to learning resources from their first day of school. As users join, leave, and move around within a district, Clever IDM keeps their accounts current – ensuring everyone has the right access at the right time. The new solution saves district administrators hours of work a week, with the same level of reliability and trust that more than 65% of U.S. K-12 schools have come to expect from Clever – and at a significantly lower cost than alternatives on the market today.
“Over-stretched IT departments have become crafty problem solvers, manually patching up identity management issues with custom, case-by-case solutions, but it’s kind of like chronic back pain: it’s always there, everybody hates it, and it’s difficult to deal with – but there’s a better solution,” said Trish Sparks, Vice President of Customer Success and Sales. “As a former teacher, I know this is huge because districts are getting a high-quality product for such a low price that removes the friction that would otherwise take time away from teachers.”
Clever IDM is an optional, budget-friendly technology solution that can be added to Clever’s free-to-schools enterprise services, helping districts use the data they already have in Clever to automatically provision user accounts and passwords and manage organizational units (OUs) in Active Directory and Google Workspace.
With Clever IDM, schools receive the following benefits:
- Automation of repetitive manual processes: This new solution eliminates the delays and errors in account creation that are inevitable with manual processes, giving students, teachers, and staff faster access to the resources they need and reducing demands on strained IT departments.
- Secure account management: Managing accounts through scripts or manual processes can lead to security vulnerabilities, like inappropriate access for existing users or continued access for users after they’ve left a district. With cybersecurity attacks becoming more common, these vulnerabilities are more dangerous than ever. Clever IDM helps districts protect student data and minimize the risk of a data breach by actively creating, managing, and deprovisioning user accounts — protecting sensitive data and closing security gaps. With nightly syncs, easy troubleshooting, and in-depth audit reporting, Clever IDM makes sure the right people have access to the right resources at the right time.
- Account provisioning in minutes: At-the-ready access to digital learning tools has never been more important for an A+ student and teacher experience. With Clever IDM, districts can ditch the scripts, saving hours on manual account creation, account updating, and troubleshooting each week; that means IT staff get time back to focus on what teachers need most. Clever IDM uses the data districts are already syncing to Clever, making setup quick and easy. Plus, it’s in the same Clever dashboard administrators are already using to manage rostering and SSO.
- Fraction of the cost of other identity management solutions in the market: Technology implementation can be expensive, but because the Clever digital learning platform is always free for districts, they have the option to add Clever IDM and cover all of their identity management needs for a much lower price than that of other solutions. With no additional fees for setup, training, or support, districts can utilize Clever IDM for Google Workspace and Active Directory for only $1.00 per user per year.
“I don’t think about student log-in credential issues anymore. I don’t think about rostering. Even if I don’t get it into the SIS in time, when you run Clever IDM, it appends it to the Clever profile, so when the data is passed from Clever into the programs, it’s already there,” said Dylan Jones, Instructional Technology and Data Coordinator, Sunflower County Consolidated School District. “It frees up time to do different things at the end of the day.”
This new functionality builds on Clever’s introduction of identity management last year with support for Google Workspace. Clever IDM is available today for Google and later this month for Active Directory at just $1 per user per year, with no extra cost per destination.
About Clever
Clever is on a mission to unlock new ways to learn for all students. More than 65% of U.S. K-12 schools now use Clever to simplify access and improve engagement with digital learning. With our free platform for schools and a network of leading application providers, we’re committed to advancing educational equity. Clever, a Kahoot! company, has offices in San Francisco, CA and Durham, NC but you can visit us at clever.com anytime.
