Clever Strengthens Secure Password Management for K-12 Schools

Clever IDM's new functionality gives K-12 districts critical control over credential management, addressing the growing volume of credentials in the digital education ecosystem

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 1, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Clever, the platform powering secure digital learning for over 100,000 schools, today releases Secure Password Management, which provides powerful centralized and distributed tools to secure accounts, improve password hygiene, and simplify password management for understaffed K-12 IT teams using Clever IDM. 

With nearly half of all web-based breaches involving weak credentials, schools must ensure they have foundational security practices like strong, complex passphrases and multi-factor authentication in place to secure accounts. However, with the rise of digital tools and identities in K-12 schools, the number of passwords that students, teachers, and staff have to manage has also grown. Clever Single Sign On and Portal ensure that the number of passwords that need to be remembered don't increase with growing app utilization in schools. In addition to streamlining passwords, schools need to ensure each password is secure and memorable and manage changes with minimal disruption for stretched IT teams. Under-resourced IT teams often struggle with password management in schools leading to numerous help desk tickets, frustrated students and teachers, and lost instructional time.

That's why Clever is announcing Secure Password Management in Clever IDM with new enhancements that deliver powerful centralized tools to manage, distribute, synchronize, reset, and recover passwords for key identity providers like Google, Entra ID, Active Directory, and Clever. Unlike enterprises, schools have uniquely distributed end users like students and teachers, so Clever has designed Secure Password Management with classroom delegation in mind. District administrators can allow subsets of users the agency to reset their own passwords, plus choose specific complexity requirements appropriate per age group. With the option to allow teachers to view student passwords securely in the Clever Teacher Portal, or reset if needed, the focus in classrooms can stay on learning.

Secure Password Management in Clever IDM provides important and unique functionality for schools looking to streamline password administration across identities, tools, and systems. Best of all, it is an integrated component of a digital education identity platform that combines secure identity and access management with a powerful and seamless digital classroom experience.

"A core aspect of identity and access management is password management" says Mohit Gupta, director of product at Clever. "And, with Clever's continued focus on building the most secure yet simple Identity and Access Management (IAM) tools for K-12 education, we knew we needed to tackle how schools deal with passwords today. The new features in Clever IDM provide robust credential management, ensuring strong account protection while minimizing access issues for students and teachers."

Key Features of Password Management in Clever IDM:

• Self-serve password reset and account recovery: Determine which users, grades, schools have the ability to reset their passwords for Google, Active Directory, and Entra ID directly in Clever. Recover accounts via email, SMS or security questions.
• Random or formulaic password generation: Generate randomized passphrases from school-safe words, numbers, and characters, when creating new accounts for Google, Active Directory, or Entra ID.
• Insecure password prevention: With default complexity requirements and automatic checks to prevent using passwords shared publicly in breaches, Clever consistently ensures password strength.
• Secure password distribution and visibility: Easily download new passwords upon provisioning within the 10 day viewing period. Students' passwords can remain visible in the Clever Teacher Portal, even when reset in Clever.
• Password synchronization: Keep passwords in sync across multiple connected systems when accounts are first created or when passwords are changed through Clever.
• Delegated password reset: Teachers can reset students, school tech leads can reset school users, and Clever admins can reset district-wide users.
• Password policy enforcement: Customize password complexity requirements based on a student's grade level, school or by user type, ensuring accounts always have age-appropriate yet strong passwords.
• Part of a layered digital education ecosystem that includes SSO, MFA and automated account creation to streamline and secure access for K-12.

To learn more about how Clever IDM goes beyond account provisioning and helps you securely and simply manage passwords across all your identities, visit: https://www.clever.com/products/clever-idm.

About Clever
Clever is on a mission to connect every student to a world of learning. More than 77% of U.S. K-12 schools use Clever to power secure digital learning experiences. And, with Clever's layered security solutions, K-12 schools can protect district access and identities for all staff, teachers, and students. With a secure platform for schools and a network of leading application providers, Clever is committed to advancing education with technology that works for students everywhere. Clever, a Kahoot! company, has an office in San Francisco, CA, but you can visit us at clever.com anytime.

SOURCE Clever