November 10, 2025
Every year, IT leaders in higher education are hit with a flood of "game-changing" apps and compliance mandates. Most are just noise.
But in 2025, a handful of simple, powerful technologies actually delivered, saving institutions real time, real money, and mitigating real risk. We've compiled the five must-have security and efficiency wins that proved effective and should absolutely be part of your 2026 strategic plan. Stop chasing distractions and start securing the mission.
1. Mandatory MFA That Blocked 99% of Unauthorized Access
The Institutional Pain Point: Your campus population—faculty, staff, and students—is constantly turning over, leading to weak passwords and compromised accounts that expose sensitive research and student PII, leading to potential HIPAA or FERPA violations.
The Win: Mandating Multifactor Authentication (MFA) on all email, finance, and student portals, combined with rolling out a centralized, enterprise-grade password manager like 1Password or LastPass, stopped most threats cold. Studies show MFA stops 99% of unauthorized access attempts.
- Value Proposition: You achieve top-tier institutional security quickly and painlessly. Account compromises plummet, reducing IT service desk tickets and protecting the university from devastating breaches that erode public trust.
2. AI Assistants That Reduced Administrative Burden on Researchers
The Institutional Pain Point: Highly paid faculty and specialized research staff waste valuable time on low-level administrative tasks, such as summarizing long grant documents, drafting introductory syllabus materials, or synthesizing complex email threads—time that should be spent on research or teaching.
The Win: Secure, internal AI tools (like compliant versions of Copilot or Claude) were strategically introduced to handle the "boring 80%" of administrative work. These tools summarized lengthy academic papers, drafted initial internal communications, and generated meeting notes instantly.
- Value Proposition: Faculty save hours each week on administrative tasks, allowing them to focus their human expertise on high-value research and instruction, boosting the institution's output and grant competitiveness.
3. Centralized Cloud Platforms That Ended Data Sprawl
The Institutional Pain Point: Data sprawl across unsecured local drives, external hard drives, and fragmented departmental servers makes compliance impossible, poses serious data recovery risks, and violates security mandates for PII.
The Win: The university enforced a policy-driven migration to centralized, managed cloud solutions like Google Workspace (Drive) or Microsoft SharePoint/OneDrive. This wasn't just about storage; it meant having every file secured, governed, and backed up instantly.
- Value Proposition: Institutional data is automatically secured, recoverable, and auditable for compliance. It eliminates the risk of sensitive research disappearing on a forgotten hard drive, ensuring continuity of mission.
4. Integrated Communication Platforms That Silenced Email Chaos
The Institutional Pain Point: Mission-critical communications—especially during emergencies or security incidents—get lost in overstuffed staff inboxes, buried under fragmented "RE: RE: FW: Question?" email chains across siloed departments.
The Win: Platforms like Microsoft Teams or Slack (Enterprise Grid) standardized internal communication. Instant messaging, threaded conversations, and quick file sharing made rapid communication organized and centralized, ensuring crucial updates didn't get buried.
- Value Proposition: Quick questions get quick answers, improving cross-departmental collaboration (e.g., between Finance and Procurement) and ensuring that security alerts or urgent administrative needs are addressed instantly, minimizing institutional response time.
5. Automated Access Reviews That Simplified Regulatory Compliance
The Institutional Pain Point: Manual identity and access management (IAM) reviews—ensuring terminated staff or graduating students lose access to all resources—are time-consuming, prone to human error, and a massive liability for compliance auditors.
The Win: Automated identity governance and administration (IGA) tools (often built into major platforms like Okta or Microsoft Azure AD) were implemented. These tools automatically audit user access rights and revoke permissions based on HR/student status changes, simplifying the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP).
- Value Proposition: You save hundreds of hours on manual auditing, instantly reduce the risk of insider threats from former users, and can demonstrate a clean, auditable record to regulators for FERPA, HIPAA, or grant-specific compliance.
Stop Chasing Shiny Objects. Start Securing Your Mission.
The best technology disappears. It works quietly in the background, making your faculty faster, your data cleaner, and your compliance posture iron-clad.
As you plan your 2026 IT budget, stop asking, "What new app should we pilot?" and start asking, "Which technologies deliver verifiable security, measurable productivity gains, and reduce our compliance burden?"
We specialize in setting up the real wins—no unnecessary complexity, just practical, powerful solutions that bring peace of mind and protect your university's mission.
