This joint effort will help institutions protect students, staff, financial resources, and sensitive data on campus and online.

Persona, a leading verified identity platform, announced today that it has been selected by Internet2, an advanced technology nonprofit serving the research and education community, for its NET+ program. By joining NET+, Persona’s identity verification technology will become more widely accessible to colleges and universities, helping institutions more securely verify the identities of students, faculty, staff, and others.

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Identity fraud is placing growing pressure on higher education institutions, touching everything from admissions and financial aid to federal research access. The scale of the challenge is significant: in a 2026 review, the Department of Education flagged 300,000 FAFSA applications for additional verification based on suspected fraud risk, and on the institutional level, California community colleges received more than 1.2 million fraudulent applications in 2024. Against this backdrop, strong identity practices are critical to helping institutions protect their students and staff, safeguard financial resources, and maintain the trust of their communities.

“As identity becomes increasingly important across the higher education experience, institutions need to keep people safe without creating unnecessary friction in the moments that matter, whether on campus or online,” said Sasha Dobrolioubov, VP of Partnerships at Persona. “We’re proud to be joining Internet2 and a community that shares our focus on supporting the people at the heart of higher education. Through the NET+ program, we’ll be able to engage directly with institutions and help strengthen how they verify and protect the identities of students, faculty, staff, and alumni.”

Persona already supports the identity programs of dozens of higher education institutions, from community colleges and public research universities to online education providers, and has tripled its higher education business since 2024 – adding flagship private and public universities, like the University of Colorado.

Joining as an Internet2 member and being selected for NET+ through a rigorous, community-led RFP process builds on that momentum, expanding Persona’s ability to support institutions across the broader research and education community.

“Research and education institutions need practical ways to strengthen identity assurance and address fraud without creating unnecessary barriers for the communities they serve,” said Sean O’Brien, Vice President for NET+ Cloud Services at Internet2. “NET+ Persona is a solution for those challenges, providing identity verification that can meet a range of institutional needs and complementing the broader identity work Internet2 and InCommon support across the community.”

Supporting Identity Across Higher Education

With NET+ Persona, institutions can take a risk-based approach to identity verification, adapting how and when they verify identity based on the needs of each interaction, which helps institutions strengthen security without requiring every user to complete the same high-friction process.

Institutions can use NET+ Persona to:

• Protect student aid and scholarship programs from fraudulent applications and synthetic identities
• Support identity assurance requirements for researchers accessing sensitive or controlled-access data
• Secure high-risk workflows, including account recovery, password resets, and financial aid disbursements
• Replace manual video calls and in-person identity checks with secure, digital verification

NET+ Persona is now available to Internet2 higher education and affiliate members, as well as the broader higher education community. Learn more: internet2.edu/services/persona/

About Persona

Persona offers a unified identity platform that gives organizations the building blocks they need to securely collect, verify, manage, and make decisions about individuals' and businesses' identities, along with automation and orchestration tools to streamline the entire process from end to end.

Founded in 2018, Persona is headquartered in San Francisco and is available in 200+ countries and territories and 20 different languages. Persona supports consumer-facing businesses across a variety of sectors including public sector agencies, higher education, retail, fintech, marketplace, delivery services, real estate and hospitality, HR, edtech, legal services, home and childcare services, and more. For additional information, please visit withpersona.com.

About Internet2

Internet2^® is a non-profit, member-driven advanced technology community founded by the nation’s leading higher education institutions in 1996. Internet2 serves 342 U.S. universities, 59 government agencies, 46 regional and state education networks and through them supports more than 80,000 community anchor institutions, over 1,000 InCommon participants, 61 leading corporations working with our community, and 70 national research and education network operators that represent more than 100 countries.

Internet2 delivers a diverse portfolio of technology solutions that leverages, integrates, and amplifies the strengths of its members and helps support their educational, research and community service missions.

Internet2’s core infrastructure components include the nation’s largest and fastest research and education network that was built to deliver advanced, customized services that are accessed and secured by the community-developed trust and identity framework.

For more information, visit https://internet2.edu.

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