Organization: Medical College of Wisconsin
Country: United States
Industry: Higher Education

Goal: Make it easier for people to unlock and reset their passwords while increasing security
Result: Close to 20% enrollment (core user base) one month post launch
Solution: Specops uReset

Without a self-service password reset solution, Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) users, students, faculty, staff, and consultants, had only one option to regain access to a locked account – to call the IT service desk. This method typically is a cost driver in organizations, but for MCW, cost was not the catalyst. They wanted to provide users with the ability to unlock their own accounts as a means of convenience. At the same time, they wanted to make it easier for their users to reset their passwords.

Eric Tanner, MCW Service Desk Manager said: “For us, password reset and account unlocks make up about 6% of support call volume and take up about 3% of time. The main reason we started evaluating solutions was to provide our users with choice beyond calling the service desk.”

While evaluating different self-service password reset solutions, MCW’s key areas of focus included fast installation, ease of use for enrollment and reset, and streamlined helpdesk capabilities including user verification. The simplicity of Specops uReset allowed MCW to simultaneously roll out increased password complexity requirements.

“We had Specops uReset installed in about 30 minutes and it was launched at the same time we introduced the new password complexity requirements, resulting in a very low number of password reset calls to the service desk during that time” continued Eric. “But most importantly the system has proven to be super end user friendly, especially around authentication with all the options such as Twitter, Facebook and Fingerprint authentication to name a few. Our users get it, it’s quick, and secure.”

Another area of focus was security. To verify user’s identities when calling the service desk, IT staff relied on multiple methods to confirm identity – and those methods were not always reliable.

“Security is increasingly becoming a focal area for us and password security is at the heart of this,” continued Eric. “The ability for the service desk staff to verify a user’s identity before resetting his or her password is essential.”

With Specops uReset, MCW has been able to satisfy the end user ease of use requirement resulting in over 800 user enrollments and over 300 resets in first month post launch, while also addressing the helpdesk end user verification gap with Specops uReset’s helpdesk capabilities including multi-factor authentication for this task.

The Medical College of Wisconsin is the state’s only private medical school and health sciences graduate school. Founded in 1893, it is dedicated to leadership and excellence in education, patient care, research, and community engagement. More than 1,200 students are enrolled in MCW’s medical school and graduate school programs in Milwaukee, 56 medical students have matriculated to MCW-Green Bay since 2015, and 26 students matriculated to MCW-Central Wisconsin in 2016. MCW’s School of Pharmacy will open in 2017 or 2018 with an initial class size of 60 students. A major national research center, MCW is the largest research institution in the Milwaukee metro area and second largest in Wisconsin. In FY 2014-15, faculty received approximately $158 million in external support for research, teaching, training and related purposes, of which approximately $139 million is for research. This total includes highly competitive research and training awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Annually, MCW faculty direct or collaborate on more than 3,200 research studies, including clinical trials. Additionally, more than 1,500 physicians provide care in virtually every specialty of medicine for more than 525,000 patients annually.

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