Looking to the Future With Updated SAR

As students study in Talley Student Union, faculty teach and conduct research, and staff keep NC State operations thriving, data is constantly generated. From academic records to payroll and benefits, managing and securing the university’s data is a big job.

The backbone of that work is the System Access Request (SAR) application. Managed by the Office of Information Technology (OIT), SAR automates the approval process used to request, grant and revoke employee access to data, including data in the Human Resources, Student Information and Financial systems.

While there are around 200 SAR users, the process impacts every member of the campus community — giving faculty and staff access to critical information while protecting it from unauthorized individuals.

New Streamlined Application

In January, OIT launched a new SAR application. Before the launch, making updates to SAR was limited by its third-party platform.

“The product was sunsetted by the vendor, so we could only perform minimal updates. It was running on an unsupported application and needed to get to a supported platform,” said Jack Foster, IT director of non-credit applications for OIT Enterprise Application Services.

SAR was moved to the Mendix platform, giving OIT more flexibility to address user feedback and add new features.

“Now that it’s on a supported platform, we can make much needed enhancements and begin managing security requests for additional campus applications,” said Foster.

In addition to modernizing the interface, the new application consolidated multiple SAR components into a comprehensive dashboard to streamline the user experience. Improved search functionality has also been well received by campus SAR users, said Deb Nosse, IT client support specialist for OIT Security and Compliance.

“All of the components are wrapped up into one application so you don’t have to go to different URLs, addresses, locations to run the administrative apps or to run the Web Security Reports,” said Nosse. “Everything is in one interface, and it’s tailored to each person’s access.”

That access is tailored based on a number of factors, such as the individual’s role, department, employment status and level of security training.

The original SAR application went live in 2008, automating a heavily manual process.

For questions about SAR, contact the NC State Help Desk via the NC State IT Service Portal or call 919.515.HELP (4357).