Stop treating your students like strangers.
Replace passwords and personal questions with StudentPass.
Introducing StudentPass™
Powerful tools for using W3C Verifiable Credentials in an academic environment, starting with self-sovereign student ID.
Focused on Skills & Achievements?
It all starts with identity.
First, ensure you’ve got the right person.
Next, issue a digital student ID Verifiable Credential (VC).
Then, other VCs can be bound to that ID.
Skills, competencies and achievements of all kinds can be strongly bound to and carried by learners,
and cryptographically verified when presented. Learn more about using StudentPassTM with VCs for achievements.
Self-Sovereign Student ID Comes First
By issuing StudentPass self-sovereign student ID before any other VC, you do three big things for students:
- You set an ID anchor for binding other VCs to that student (like skills and achievements).
- You can eliminate passwords and personal questions, and Recognize Your StudentTM at every interaction.
- You give students their first Verifiable Credential, show them the value of it, and how it works.
Recognize Your StudentTM
With StudentPass, you can welcome students warmly when they log in, call in, or walk in, quickly recognize them as members of your school family, and even greet them by name.
“Incorrect password. Your account has now been locked.”
“Your birthday and mother’s maiden name, please.”
What is StudentPass?
StudentPass is Credential Master’s version of “self-sovereign student ID.”
StudentPass is a digital student ID issued by a school to a student in the form of a Verifiable Credential (VC).
When a student shares StudentPass, it is strongly authenticatable. It can replace passwords, personal questions and even physical cards when logging in, calling in, or walking in, creating a sleek authentication experience for students at every touch point with your school.
Calling all wallets...
StudentPass (and Credential Master) do not provide an SSI wallet, which is required. Standardized SSI wallets are available from several vendors, and your school may opt to embed an SSI wallet within an existing application. You can give students their choice among compatible wallets, and not be forced to stick with one.
There’s no vendor lock-in.
Credential Master adheres closely to W3C standards, enabling vendor interoperability and school and student portability.
The VC administration tools you need to scale.
The StudentPass product suite includes all the enterprise-class tools a school needs to issue, verify, and manage up to millions of VCs.
ID is only the beginning.
The same StudentPass tools used to issue a StudentPass ID VC are ideal for issuing all future VCs to students, especially those containing achievements.
How does StudentPass work?
StudentPass replaces passwords and personal questions with a cryptographic-strength VC which the student holds and controls, but cannot tamper with.
Just like with physical ID credentials, a VC is “issued” at inception and “verified” when later shared by the student.
Issuance
To issue a StudentPass to a student:
1. The student installs a standard digital SSI wallet on their smartphone.
(Either a stand-alone SSI wallet or one that’s embedded within another app, such as the school’s existing app).
2. The school offers a secure connection to the student’s wallet, which the student accepts.
(This connection is peer-to-peer, private, encrypted end-to-end, and persistent.)
3. The school offers the student a StudentPass VC, which the student accepts.
(A StudentPass student ID VC typically includes the student’s name, photo, student ID number, etc.)
Verification
When the student logs in, calls in, or walks in, the school uses the secure connection to interact with and authenticate the student:
1. A student goes to login, call in, or walk in, and needs to authenticate to the school.
2. The school prompts the student for their StudentPass.
3. The student taps in response, sharing and proving possession of their StudentPass.
4. The school verifies the StudentPass, authenticating the student.
The student always decides if, when, and how much information they share from their StudentPass
or any other VC they possess.
From what the student shares, the school can instantly and cryptographically verify that:
- It was issued by the school
- It was issued to that student
- It hasn’t been tampered with
- It hasn’t been revoked
Credits : Icons made by iconixar, Nhor Phai, srip from www.flaticon.com
The Benefits of StudentPass
There are numerous advantages to StudentPass for the school and for students.
For the School
Login
- Fast, passwordless MFA (multi-factor authentication) for students, faculty, and staff
- Improved security: move from something you know to something you have; multi-factor; e2e encrypted communication; eliminate your trove of passwords
- Reduce/eliminate the cost of separate MFA services, and password-related support
- A path to simplifying, strengthening, and unifying complex identity architecture
- Keep existing ID system: use StudentPass for authentication while leaving your current identity system intact
- Integrate with any system supporting external Auth/IDP (Okta, Ping, ForgeRock, etc.)
- Already integrated with CAS
Call In: No Questions Asked(TM)
- Fast
- More friendly, no asking personal questions
- Improved security, store less personal data
- Already integrated with Salesforce Service Cloud, easy integration with any help desk system
Walk In
- Touchless
- Fast
- More secure than physical cards
- Can be embedded in 'smart' cards
For Students
- Great UX: simply tap and share StudentPass when prompted
- No passwords to remember, no personal questions to answer, no card to carry
- Reduce or eliminate ID theft and fraud
- Fraud becomes hard: only the credential holder can use the credential
- Mutual authentication: students can verify the school as strongly as the school verifies students, preventing phishing
For Everyone
- Portability between providers, with no vendor lock-in
- Reduce ID theft and fraud
- Student-controlled privacy enables broad compliance with strict privacy laws
- Powerful APIs for connecting to existing systems
- Scalable to millions, with enterprise-grade performance
Perhaps the biggest reason to use StudentPass for student authentication:
StudentPass lays the foundation for implementing VCs for achievements.
Learn more about the power of VCs for skills, competencies, and achievements here.
Want more student love?
Do more than eliminate passwords and personal questions.
With StudentPass you can stop requiring students to remember account numbers, ticket numbers, case IDs, schedules and any other complex information (other than what they’re supposed to be learning ;).
How?
When you issue a self-sovereign student ID, you can then bind any other VC to that student. VCs can contain
any information under the sun, and when the student digitally shares it back with the school,
you can immediately verify it as authentic…
No Questions AskedTM.
“Omni-channel secretless cryptographic authentication”
This is how identity nerds describe it
(said with the utmost affection).
“AWESOME !!”
This is how your students will describe it. Because that’s how everyone feels when there’s no more passwords or personal questions.
For security reasons alone, it’s time to go passwordless.
By 2022, Gartner predicts that 60% of large and global enterprises, and 90% of midsize enterprises, will implement passwordless methods in more than 50% of use cases.
Though widely used, passwords are fundamentally flawed and no longer an appropriate authentication method for any use case except those with minimal risk.-Gartner
Not just passwordless, secretless.
Passwords are “shared secrets” along with birthdays, first pets, and mother’s maiden names.
Thanks to countless breaches, such personal information is widely available to fraudsters and should not be used to authenticate callers.
Self-sovereign student ID uses cryptography to replace passwords and personal questions with Verifiable Credentials, helping you move away from shared secrets.
Isn’t “shared secret” an oxymoron?
There’s no need to wait.
You can begin with self-sovereign student ID now, without waiting for anyone else to agree with your approach, as with achievements.
So request a demo and see for yourself how self-sovereign student ID could work for your school.
Your students, faculty, staff — and your helpdesk —
will love you for it.
