Arvika Municipality enhances security and undergoes digital transformation in Education
with YubiKeys
About our customer Arvika Municipality
Arvika Municipality is located in Värmland County, in west-central Sweden. In the midst of a digital transformation in education, Arvika Municipality needed to change its ways of working for its 900+ teachers and staff across over 45 schools and pre-schools. With over 4000 students across all age groups, Arvika needed a one-size-fits-all security solution for its digital educational platform. They also needed to ensure the highest level of data and information security was in place to protect sensitive information about their students. At the same time, an increasing number of students are now being educated via distance learning with an increasing amount of sensitive digital data being created every day that resides in the cloud.
Key results:
- Established workplace culture that embraces strong security
- Highest level of security that was cost efficient
- Increased teacher productivity while also providing a high sense of security
The challenge
Arvika municipality knew that they had to find a solution that would work for all teachers and staff, without requiring too much pre-requisite knowledge or training efforts. The ideal solution would uphold the standards of information security legislation and guidelines from government organizations, and provide full, and strict, control over data and information access.
Arvika also realized the importance of providing a solution that would be centered around one system, to avoid having its staff work across multiple systems and platforms.
“The challenge was to create an easy-to-use IT environment, while also creating a wide sense of security among teachers and staff.”
The solution
Combining Google Workspace with YubiKeys, Arvika was able to provide an easy-to-use cloud environment for all its data and information, protected by YubiKey’s strong multi-factor authentication. Together with the Yubico certified reseller and certified Google partner–Online Partner–Arvika is now on the journey to a safer cloud environment.
In order to comply with requirements and guidelines from government organizations, Arvika conducted a thorough risk assessment of cloud-based platforms in regards to information security and relevant legislation. They concluded that Google Workspace provided a level of security that greatly surpassed anything that they could build and manage themselves. And
the hallmark strong security of YubiKeys ensured that phishing and other forms of account takeover could be stopped in their tracks. The rollout created a high degree of satisfaction among staff, as teachers previously felt unsafe working in a cloud-based environment, without proper authentication and security.
The results
- More than 450 teachers and staff have enabled two-factor authentication via YubiKey to ensure the highest level of data and information security with another 450+ being enrolled in the future.
- High satisfaction among staff as systems are easy to use and provide a high-sense of security.
- Increased productivity for teachers and other staff
- Implementation of a single platform now handles cloud, security, and strong authentication in a cost-efficient manner.
“It should be hard to do the wrong thing, and easy to do the right thing.”
Sources
Arvika Municipality case study.pdf