According to research from Forrester, the average cost for a single password reset is bout $70. In a separate report, Forrester stated that large organizations spend close to $1 million per year on password-related support and infrastructure costs.

In addition to the time and resources needed to for password-related support, in critical areas such as K-12 education, there is also the security risk of password management. Verizon’s 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report notes that 80% of breaches involve compromised and weak passwords. Education, the report explains, “continues to be plagued by errors, social engineering, and inadequately secured email credentials.”

Technology such as Single Sign On (SSO) can be used to help reduce password management issues in many school districts.

From Education Dive on Single Sign On technology:

Over the past several years, many school districts have embraced Single Sign On (SSO) technology as one solution to help reduce password management issues. With SSO, users only need one password to log into all their different accounts. This reduces the number of passwords a user has to remember and provides a centralized system for IT to manage passwords.

Other protocols, such as adding two-factor authentication (2FA) or multi-factor authentication (MFA) can also improve password security, but for may not work for all school districts. For example, sometimes the 2FA requires getting an SMS text on a cell phone where there is no cell service. Biometric authentication such as fingerprint scanning can also offer benefits and can be easily installed on via a USB port.

As security continues to remain a top priority for IT teams, it’s important for schools to recognize improvements they can make to help protect devices and school data in order to save money.