Summary
Activating Multifactor Authentication (MFA) boosts protection of your account from hackers. We are all used to having one layer of security — our password — to protect our accounts. With MFA, if bad guys get through the password layer, they will still need your phone or other second verification methods to get into your account.
If you receive a verification request on your phone that you didn’t prompt, you’ll know that someone is trying to access your accounts. You will need to deny that request and then work with the IT Help Desk to reset your password and secure your account.
Protecting the County is a Team Effort
In our county and at places across the country, phishing emails are very common. All it takes is one person to click on a bad link and unknowingly share their credentials for a domino effect of compromised accounts to quickly proliferate across the county. Between January and December 2023, it is estimated that there were more than 1.2 Trillion yes i said Trillion phishing emails sent worldwide! MFA can help keep bad guys out, even if they get your username and password through a phishing attempt.
Your Credentials Are Valuable to Criminals
When bad guys steal your username and password, they can lock you out of your account, and then do any or all of the following:
- Pretend to be you and send unwanted or harmful emails and messages around the County.
- Go through —or even delete — all of your emails, contacts, files, etc.
- Use your work account to reset the passwords for any of your personal accounts that may use your County email as the username (banking, shopping, etc.)
MFA keeps both you and the County safer by adding an extra layer of security to the sign-in process.
Ways to Use MFA
There are several ways you can use MFA to protect your account:
- Receive a phone call to either a landline or cell phone for verification.
- Use the Microsoft MFA Authenticator App on your cell phone.
- Use the Microsoft MFA Authenticator App on a tablet.