Al Mawakeb Schools has been committed to improving the quality of education in Dubai for more than three decades, offering a comprehensive educational solution to build a strong foundation for the future of its students. They currently have three branches across Dubai and provide excellent education to more than 200,000 students.
Challenge
Since the dawn of school applications, Al Mawakeb Schools has been using excel sheets to store the login credentials of its faculty and students. They had to update these excel sheets in order to update the information on their ERP system. This posed several security risks and inconveniences. Excel sheets are not secure enough to store sensitive data like passwords. They can be easily shared and distributed, which can increase the risk of unauthorised access to sensitive information. This can happen accidentally, such as when a sheet was sent to the wrong recipient, or intentionally when a user shares the sheet with someone outside the school. Apart from the security risks, Educators spent countless hours of instructional time helping students track down their usernames, log in to various sites, and access new resources, taking away from crucial learning time. The IT staff spent more time resetting logins and helping connect students and teachers with resources than addressing other technical issues, opening district schools up to potential security risks. After such incidents started recurring in AMSI’s schools, they decided to find a solution to their problems. They had to come up with a concrete method to improve their security and efficiency. With several trial and errors, they finally decided to use user access management tools. The next challenge they faced was to find a tool that can help them with their issues.
Solution
Al Mawakeb Schools tried to tie up with a leading user access management tool to sort their issues. Not long after the piloting period, they realised that it was not what they wanted. They required a more up-to-date, seamless tool to secure their data and improve the efficiency of their school.
This is where Lync came into the picture. Lync introduced Al Mawakeb Schools to the concept of single-sign-on (SSO) along with user access management. Soon, all the excel sheets disappeared, and admins were assigned to give access to who sees what.
Result
The introduction of Lync at Al Mawakeb Schools led to an 80% reduction in the time teachers had to spend logging their students into different applications. As a result, the IT team was able to shift their focus from dealing with login-related issues to other important matters such as data security, rostering, and finding suitable applications, which helped the school increase its efficiency, and in turn its admission rates by 80%.
With Lync, students only need to enter their login credentials once, and they can access all the applications they need. This helped teachers, especially primary school teachers, to focus more on teaching and helping students with their academic needs.
Additionally, Lync improved the security of the school by providing a centralised system for managing user access to applications and school data. This reduced the risk of unauthorised access and duplication of sensitive data.