Hampshire County Council has extended its five-year agreement with authentication authority CRYPTOCard to roll out two-factor authentication for education staff across participating schools in the county.
The CRYPTOCard’s authentication service provides county’s teachers with the ability to access education services, such as SIMS.net which holds information on staff and pupils.
Hampshire County Council is expected to initially run the service among 370 schools over the next six to twelve months and then across all schools in 2011.
Since 2005, CRYPTOCard has worked with the County Council to provide authentication services across its head office and satellite office employees and also among county-controlled services, including the fire service.
Under the agreement, Hampshire County Council has upgraded its service to CRYPTOCard’s BlackShield ID platform, which offers authentication, automated provisioning, reporting and management and a self service portal.
Simon Blake, principal IT consultant at Hampshire County Council, said: "Securing the data we have on our employees, teachers and students is paramount to Hampshire County Council. Our history with CRYPTOCard has proven to us that two-factor authentication not only provides this extra layer of security but that it is reliable, easy to use and cost-effective.
"Teachers don’t have the time to go through complicated steps to access data on their students or education services, so usability, without compromising security, was a key consideration for this roll-out."
