More and more, healthcare as providers are merging together or acquiring other hospitals to increase their footprint, provide higher levels of patient care, and enable strategic synergies.

Modern identity and access management (IAM) solutions are a crucial, but often overlooked facilitator of IT integration. Having the right IAM solution in place not only reduces time, costs, and integration conflicts, but also ensures a smoother transition for both clinicians and patients.

Last month, Identity Automation joined K12 school districts, colleges, and universities from around the state of Florida in Orlando for the FAEDS 2018 conference hosted by the Florida Association of Educational Data Systems.

Healthcare mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are happening more frequently than ever. In fact, 2017 was a banner year for M&As, with 115 transactions, including 10 deals between hospitals with a net revenue of over $1 billion—the highest number in recent history.

In busy hospital settings, clinicians move from room to room and department to department. They require multiple logins as they switch from one workstation to another and access multiple endpoint devices, such as thick and thin clients running Windows- or Linux-based operating systems.

While higher education institutions face many of the same identity and access management (IAM) challenges as corporations, they also must overcome a number of complex and unique hurdles that typically aren’t seen in corporate enterprise deployments.

Though many of us know that healthcare data is valuable, not all of us are aware of exactly how valuable it is. Electronic health records (EHRs) are a one-stop shop for all the data a hacker wants: medical, financial, and personal. Some data doesn’t age either—for example, your birth date and Social Security number never change.

One time passwords (OTPs) are a popular choice for organizations looking to step up their security with two-factor authentication (2FA). These randomly generated passwords are only valid for a single login session and overcome many of the vulnerabilities of traditional passwords.

Challenge/Response, also known as knowledge-based authentication, is a form of authentication where users verify their identities by answering “challenge” questions based on personal information about the user.

More and more, organizations are looking for cost-effective alternatives to traditional passwords that increase security without affecting usability. Many people believe that push notification authentication, a newer mobile-based authentication method, could be the answer.

Historically, magnetic stripe cards were used for access control. However, these cards aren’t particularly secure, as the information stored on them is typically not encrypted. Additionally, they have to be physically swiped, leading to issues with wear and tear.