Two Factor Authentication

Enabling additional security on University email accounts

There has been a significant rise in cyber attacks on universities leading to several institutions experiencing systems failures and outages which have made the mainstream press. 

Emails are one of the most vulnerable systems and if accounts are compromised (often through tricking users into entering their credentials in an untrusted site) then an attacker can use this to gain access to other systems and gradually gain additional accounts and privileges. 

Account security can be increased by adding an extra factor of authentication, which allows the system you are logging into know it is really you and not someone else. This mitigates the loss of account details as an attacker is unlikely to be able to get the additional information required, as this is often something that changes like a one-time password.

Two-factor authentication will now become mandatory to protect the University. 

The National Cyber Security Centre provides additional information on why you should use multi-factor authentication.

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