I am pleased to announce the appointment of Jim Harold as Chief Executive Officer effective August 10, 2020. Jim has over twenty years of experience successfully building and growing businesses at organizations in the enterprise software and SaaS spaces, such as Accenture, PeopleSoft, Neustar, and Acxiom.

*Disclaimer: This article originally appeared on Forbes.

In recent years, mergers and acquisitions have seen a record number of transactions and continue to draw staggering figures. According to a recent IMAA report, 2018 saw about 49,000 global M&As with a combined enterprise value of $3.8 trillion. This year is projected to have similar or greater numbers.

According to a recent Gallup report regarding educational technology use in K-12, 65% of teachers say they use digital learning tools to teach every day. To provide their services, digital learning vendors require timely and up-to-date access to student, teacher, and class roster data. Unfortunately, schools haven’t changed their rostering processes to meet digital demands, i.e. they’re still manually compiling and uploading these rosters to third-party applications. 

At Identity Automation, we strive to be a trusted advisor to our customers during their Identity and Access Management (IAM) journey. The second an organization becomes our customer, it’s our practice to provide best-in-class service to implement and evolve their solution as time goes on.  

Ongoing innovations in pedagogy and learning strategies in the K-12 industry have spurred school districts to rapidly adopt digital tools for the classroom, while reducing their reliance on traditional print-based educational resources. To deliver their services, digital curriculum vendors require timely access to accurate and up-to-date student, teacher, and class roster data.

*Disclaimer: This article originally appeared on Forbes.

With COVID-19 forcing organizations of all sizes to shift employees to remote work, some may be concerned their company’s cybersecurity measures are inadequate. Though COVID-19 is the most drastic recent example of necessitating working from home, it certainly won’t be the last.

Recently, we discussed the importance of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) as a tool school districts should leverage to help prevent data breaches and protect against threat actors. MFA is a sure step towards securing access to district systems and applications; however, with at-home instruction being K-12 education’s new normal, schools need to take an even more comprehensive approach to securing their resources. 

COVID-19 has forced hundreds of thousands of government and public safety staff to rapidly shift from the traditional office setting to remote offices located in their homes. These employees have gone to work in the same building every day for years, often with a badge for secure building access, and essentially followed the same daily operations. But now, everything has changed.

Valley Medical Center, a University of Washington facility located in South King County, Washington, is a network of acute care clinics and one public hospital that serves over 600,000 area residents. For 14 years, Valley Medical’s clinical staff had utilized Single Sign-On (SSO) to help streamline clinic workflows, but their solution wasn’t aging well.

Identity and Access Management (IAM) in healthcare is designed to achieve the balance of strengthening security measures and enhancing clinical workflows through efficient access to digital tools and records— all the while meeting HIPAA and HITECH compliance.