Find out why your school should have 2Factor authentication in place for your staff working from home.

Wed 19 January, 2022

Nowadays your complex password is sadly not enough to protect your precious accounts and data from malicious entities that exist in the world we live in.

Soft Egg highly recommends an additional layer of protection on top of your normal password in the form of Multi-factor Authentication. Multi-factor Authentication (also referred to as Two Factor Authentication, MFA and 2FA) is a process where upon accessing accounts or apps online, users are prompted to provide additional identify verification; scanning a fingerprint or entering a code from their phone.

You may be reading this already aware and familiar with this process as many sites like Facebook, Instagram and Amazon already use this additional security to secure your account from unwanted access. The challenge with this in Schools however comes when a secondary authentication source may not be available in a classroom setting. Most relevantly this is where school policies prohibit the use of mobile phones in school and therefore a secondary authentication source is unavailable.

Despite this issue, thankfully some organisations have created clever ways to maintain clear security whilst providing flexibility. Microsoft for example now provides ways to secure your Office 365 account with MFA but to only be prompted to enter your extra verification when logging on outside of the School network. These policies maintain the extra security in place for anyone who may have maliciously obtained your account details but prevents the need for codes and extra steps when accessing in School. These policies, called ‘conditional access’, do require additional paid licensing however the benefits and flexibility they offer far outweigh the cost.

If you would like to find out more about MFA or would like to explore the potential benefits of conditional access to make your school accounts more secure please get in touch.