Countdown to 2FA

The clock is ticking.

As of today, about 15,000 NC State employees have 138 days left before they are required to enroll in Google 2-Step and Duo, the university’s two-factor authentication (2FA) solutions for many web-based services. The university has a total of 22,300 active employees.

Are you one of the employees who hasn’t enrolled in 2FA? Don’t wait.

Enroll now in both Google 2-Step and Duo to protect yourself and the university against hundreds of cyber threats that occur daily. Google 2-Step and Duo “double check” your identity when you sign in to an account by requiring you to log in with a password and an additional security measure, including a security code that is delivered to a mobile device via text or mobile app, a USB security key or backup codes. This simple two-step login process makes it extremely difficult for a hacker to breach your account and thwarts up to 98 percent of all phishing attacks.

All faculty, staff, student employees, and no-pay employees/retirees will have to enroll by Oct. 31 in both:

  • Google 2-Step for NC State G Suite accounts, including Google generic accounts for which they are listed as an administrative or technical contact.
  • Duo for university web applications that use Shibboleth authentication, including the MyPack Portal, Moodle and PeopleAdmin.

Students will be required to enroll in 2FA at a later date.

Employee and device enrollment

As of June 12, out of a total of 22,300 university employees, only:

  • 31 percent have already enrolled in Duo Authentication.
  • 34 percent have already enrolled in Google 2-Step Verification.

Of those employees enrolled in Duo:

  • 86.5 percent use the Duo app on their phone.
  • 9 percent receive Short Message Service (SMS) text messages.
  • 3.5 percent use U2F keys.

Of those employees enrolled in Google 2-Step, 12 percent have a Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) token registered with their account as either their primary or backup method. There are no additional employee statistics available at this time.

University employees are encouraged to enroll in both services as soon as possible at 2-Factor Authentication at NC State. Training opportunities are also available.

Please consider using 2FA for your personally-owned accounts, including your personal email, banking and social media accounts. You can find out more about other websites and services that offer two-factor authentication at Two-Factor Auth (2FA).