Responsibility in cyberspace and secure access to accounts is not only about securing your personal and sensitive information but also about securing university data. Would it be okay for you if everyone at your workplace had access to your private conversation with a colleague or your payroll history? To avoid solving such issues, there is a way to effectively secure your data - multi-factor authentication. And that's exactly what we're preparing at MUNI and looking for volunteers to participate in testing it.
Multi-factor authentication is a method that effectively increases the security of logging into systems and online services by requiring multiple steps of authentication. It's no longer enough for an attacker to know your username and reveal your password. We have prepared another obstacle in his path to hacking your account, which is very difficult to bypass. It can be, for example, an electronic key (token) or one of the biometric authentications, such as a fingerprint or face recognition.
You might think multi-factor authentication is just an unnecessary extra sign-in step. However, you've probably been coming into contact with it for a long time in situations where it feels entirely natural to you. Because everyone wants to keep their finances safe, logging into your online bank accounts is a good example of such a situation. Moreover, recent years have seen increased attacks on the university and its users, where we have a lot of data to protect. Since we have and want the most secure cyber environment at the university, we deal with multi-factor authentication here at MU. In addition, multi-factor authentication will likely be mandatory for logging into selected services and systems in the future.
We need your help to make the university's multi-factor authentication, its setup, and use as seamless and enjoyable as possible for you! The best way to do this is by filling out a questionnaire focusing on multi-factor authentication awareness and participating in user testing. Thanks to your participation, we will to iron out the kinks and fine-tune the details.
To make up for the time of all those who participate in user testing in addition to the questionnaire, we have prepared small MUNI promotional items (such as a mug, notebook, puzzle, and others) as rewards.
EDIT: Filling out the questionnaire and user testing have already taken place and have been closed.
It has been used abroad for a long time as a standard for increasing the security of online accounts and protecting against cyber or phishing attacks (what is phishing?) and against illegitimate handling of personal and sensitive data. It has become increasingly popular in the Czech Republic in recent years, and more and more companies are implementing it in their systems to increase the security of their online services for their customers and users. In the same way, many people use multi-factor authentication, for example, when accessing their Google accounts. In short, it is an easy and effective way to protect your data.
The abbreviation MFA stands for Multi-Factor Authentication.
Multi-factor authentication can be set up also for logging into the IS MUNI Information System. You can activate it in a few steps according to this instruction.
Starting in the second half of 2025, Masaryk University will restrict the automatic forwarding of employee emails to private and external email accounts. The goal of this measure is to enhance the protection of personal and sensitive data.
As of 1 August 2024, the ESRI ArcGIS Desktop licence, which was previously available to all MU employees and students, will no longer be available at Masaryk University. As an alternative, we recommend switching to the more modern ArcGIS Pro, which offers a modern user interface, greater stability, more advanced features and better user support.
