Kennesaw State’s University Information Technology Services department plans to make the two-step authentication service, DUO, a university requirement for all faculty, staff and students, beginning on March 1.
Students who do not sign up for DUO by March 1 will not have access to their Adobe Spark, Office 365 and KSUmail accounts. DUO will be extended to Owl Express and Degree Works beginning on March 9 when UITS will take those services down for maintenance, according to an email sent to students on Feb. 14.
UITS Executive Director Veronica Trammell said that Owl Express will not be down for maintenance past March 11. Once it is back up and running, students and faculty will be required to use two-factor authentication to access course information and register for classes for summer and fall 2019 classes, according to the email.
“We think students are very familiar with it — it’s not going to be a big deal,” Trammell said. “It’s just a matter of getting the word out to them to let them know that that’s something they have to do moving forward.”
Trammell said that the University System of Georgia required its institutions to use the two-factor authentication service.
“USG typically has policies and procedures that they like for all of the universities to follow,” Trammell said. “And they give us time to implement those processes.”
According to its website, DUO combines security expertise with a user-centered philosophy to provide two-factor authentication, endpoint remediation and secure single sign-on tools for the modern era.
“It has proven to be very, very successful at helping to reduce the phishing and malicious attempts we had been getting,” Trammell said. “It’s very important for us to make sure that our faculty, student and staff’s data is protected.”
