SSOGEN Assists Major International University Meet the Challenge of COVID-19 Remote Access Shift to Support New Study From Home Curriculum

SSOGEN Corporation, a Gold level member of Oracle Partner Network, today announced it implemented an SSO security upgrade solution to assist a large international university with solving a network access security problem that was exacerbated by COVID-19.

The University of the Free State (UFS) in Bloemfontein, South Africa with a student population of 38,000, was forced to shift their educational curriculum from an on-campus classroom teaching format to a remote access online format. This necessitated that all students, professors and staff access university servers remotely. Without a Virtual Private Network (VPN) in place, concerns arose that UFS potentially could be vulnerable to cyber-attacks. SSOgen stepped in, assessed their SSO security requirements and tailored an SSO network solution to protect them and their online community from the threat of network intrusions.

After a receipt of UFS online inquiry, SSOgen immediately set up a 30 day, free of charge, Proof of Concept (PoC) trial. This allowed UFS to properly evaluate SSOgen Single Sign-on solutions for their PeopleSoft / Microsoft ADFS SSO integration with DUO multi-factor authentication. After a successful PoC trial, UFS made the decision to implement SSOgen SSO Gateway solution. Integration to a live production environment was very quick and easy. UFS was extremely pleased with the performance of SSOgen, the high uptime level they are experiencing and the affordable pay as they go service fee. A solution was in place in less than a month.

Louis Marais, Head of Systems, Platforms & Networks at UFS was looking for a PeopleSoft integration solution to accommodate Single Sign-On with Multi-Factor Authentication that was cost-effective, easy to install and included the latest NextGen SSO technologies.

Louis Marais stated that “SSOgen was very quick to respond, set up a Proof of Concept trial (PoC) within a few days. The actual PoC setup time was accomplished in less than two hours in an online screen sharing session. Testing in a lower non-production and UAT environment were completed over the next few weeks and UFS was able to Go Live to a production environment in three weeks.”

“SSOgen’s team was very responsive, support was and is excellent and worked with UFS to accommodate unique requirements of our operating environment.”

“UFS was extremely pleased with our experience in working with SSOgen and would most definitely recommend them to any organization who is looking for a cost-effective, easy to install and technically sound SSO integration solution. All of UFS SSO security requirements have been met and we are very happy about the performance of our SSOgen SSO with MFA network solution.”

With the shift to at-home students and workers who are accessing their network computers remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, new vulnerabilities are being exploited by Cyber-Attacks against Internet exposed RDP servers. SSOgen has been at the forefront of this attack in providing organizations with SSO solutions that shore up these vulnerabilities that have been exposed.

Should your organization have concerns about network vulnerabilities from the increase in remote access practices into your system, please contact SSOgen for a free security review.

“We are excited to help businesses during the pandemic. We are committed to making applications accessible from home without having users dial-in VPN, and without compromising the IT security. The critical applications are now protected with Azure AD Authentication and MFA, which resulted in a greater reduction in the load on VPN devices, and a better user experience,” said Raj Mareddi, CEO, SSOGEN Corporation.

Sean Davis
678.424.5419
[email protected]