The University of Michigan in February will change how faculty, staff and students log in to their UMICH devices, accounts and profiles.
Starting Feb. 25, U-M will replace Duo with Okta to manage digital single sign-on and multi-factor authentication. Okta is the industry-leading platform for managing digital identities and access. The move aligns U-M’s practices with those of peer institutions and supports ongoing efforts to strengthen cybersecurity across the university.
MORE INFORMATION
“Moving to Okta will enhance security for all UMICH account holders and offer additional sign-in options that can improve their overall experience,” said Robert Jones, assistant vice president of support services and emerging technology in Information and Technology Services.
Beyond improved security for individuals and the university, employees and students will see an enhanced sign-in process. New capabilities, including optional passwordless sign-in features such as Face ID, Touch ID, and Windows Hello, will improve the user experience while protecting university accounts from ever-evolving cybersecurity threats.
Until the transition on Feb. 25, users will continue to sign in to access U-M web resources using Weblogin and Duo.
Enroll now
Enrollment in Okta opens Jan. 14 and users are encouraged to sign in and become familiar with the new platform. During the enrollment window, U-M Information and Technology Services is offering a step-by-step process to prepare your UMICH account for the transition.
University community members are encouraged to complete enrollment before the transition to ensure uninterrupted access to U-M web resources.
Beginning Feb. 25, users will experience key changes to the sign-in and multi-factor authentication experience:
- An Okta sign-in screen will replace the current Weblogin screen.
- Okta Verify will replace Duo for multi-factor authentication.
- When signing in to access U-M web resources, you will see the URL “okta.umich.edu” in the address bar in your browser.
- A new, optional passwordless sign-in experience called Okta FastPass will be made available (Okta FastPass is not available to Michigan Medicine users).
- A new annual sign-in requirement for all UMICH accounts will begin to help reduce the security risks associated with inactive accounts.
“Faculty and staff who have not yet completed the process are encouraged to enroll with Okta, ahead of the cutover date, to avoid any disruption in access to U-M web resources,” Jones said.
Elaine Wethington
Will there be enrollment options for an Adjunct Research Professor, such as me? The system says that I am not eligible for enrollment.
The University Record
Our apologies. The story should have said (and does now) that enrollment begins Jan. 14, so please check again tomorrow and you should be fine.
Nancy Asin
I assume these new procedures will also apply to retirees who still use their UMICH email accounts?
Candice Williams
Yes that is correct!
Rose Ramey
Thank you for verifying this applies to retirees who use umich.edu email account. What about alumni (my son) who use same umich.edu email account?
Timothy Hofer
This is a huge disruption to foist on tens of thousands of employees. Duo is also a leading industry platform with somewhat different strengths and weaknesses from Okta. To suggest that there is no choice is misleading.
One worries that because of a few edge cases corporate IT is choosing a much more expensive and complex option and pushing vast amount of uncompensated work on end-users to solve their edge case problems.
Furthermore, to do this in the middle of a semester instead of quite times of year is totally crazy.
However, it is typical of large corporate bureaucracies that they find any way they can to fix their problems by pushing the work and responsibility as much as possible onto front line workers and wasting 10s to 100s of thousand of work hours.
John Carson
I agree with Tim Hofer one hundred percent. Why do this in the middle of the semester, why do this with no consultation of faculty, staff, and students, all of whom will be effected, and why abandoned an Ann Arbor-based technology (even if now owned by Cisco) for one more Silicon Valley firm?
Stephen Burns
In what ways does this impact our alumni?
Carol Milstein
I am an alum that doesn’t use my umich account except to access the benefits website etc. I use all Apple devices and I ran into roadblocks when trying to enroll in the octa program. I have a Gmail account which I use for email. ( in fact when I retired I requested to close my umich email account.). Will I still be able to access the benefits page with my Kerberos password? How do I register an apple device?
Robert Beattie
I went through all the rigamarole of getting signed into Okta, and got this message,
“Beginning February 25, you will sign in using the Okta sign-in
screen and the Okta Verify app for multi-factor authentication.”
What will that procedure be like? How about showing us an example of what to do? How it will look and work. Thanks