Summary
Activating Multifactor Authentication (MFA) boosts protection of your account from hackers. We are all used to having one layer of security — our password — to protect our accounts. With MFA, if bad guys get through the password layer, they will still need your phone or other second verification methods to get into your account.
If you receive a verification request on your phone that you didn’t prompt, you’ll know that someone is trying to access your accounts. You will need to deny that request and then work with the ITS Service Desk to reset your password and secure your account.
Protecting the University is a Team Effort
On our campus and at universities across the country, phishing emails are very common. All it takes is one person to click on a bad link and unknowingly share their credentials for a domino effect of compromised accounts to quickly proliferate across campus. Between April and May 2022, there were more than 10,000 phishing emails sent to Fayetteville State! Some of these were emails coming from legitimate University email addresses that had been compromised. MFA can help keep bad guys out, even if they get your username and password through a phishing attempt.
Your Credentials Are Valuable to Criminals
When bad guys steal your username and password, they can lock you out of your account, and then do any or all of the following:
- Pretend to be you and send unwanted or harmful emails and Canvas messages to campus.
- Go through —or even delete — all of your emails, contacts, files, etc.
- Use your work account to reset the passwords for any of your personal accounts that may use your FSU email as the username (banking, shopping, etc.)
MFA keeps both you and the University safer by adding an extra layer of security to the sign-in process.
Ways to Use MFA
There are several ways you can use MFA to protect your account:
- Receive a phone call to either a landline or cell phone for verification.
- Use the Microsoft MFA Authenticator App on your cell phone.
- Use the Microsoft MFA Authenticator App on a tablet.
May I be Exempt from MFA?
There are currently no exceptions to MFA. ITS has found that our community has been able to complete their work and leverage MFA in a variety of settings around the globe.