HACKERS BE WARNED: IF YOU’RE GOING TO ACCESS UHS RESOURCES, BE PREPARED TO PROVE YOU ARE WHO YOU SAY YOU ARE!

With the rise in cyber-attacks globally, organizations such as UHS are taking stronger measures to protect critical resources. Seeking to reduce threats such as fraud, unauthorized access, misuse and theft of university resources, UHS implemented Two-Factor Authentication, DUO, across all four universities.

Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) is the requirement for a user to identify themselves by more than just a username and password. The second factor can include something you have, such as a token or smartcard or device code. With the DUO implementation, one of the primary goals was to ensure ease of use for all UHS faculty, staff and student users. As a result, users are provided with many options for authentication and can choose whichever option is most convenient for them.

At UH, 2FA protections for some critical enterprise services have already been implemented including AccessUH, VPN and Office 365 online applications. Plans for implementing 2FA across all critical university services are in progress.

Duo 2FA is meeting the goal! Since the implementation of Duo 2FA, we have seen a significant decrease in faculty, staff and student compromised accounts across all UHS universities. At UH alone, this represented a 60% decrease over the past year!

For more information about UH’s 2FA Duo implementation, see the following site: https://www.uh.edu/infotech/services/two-factor-authentication/