Duo being added to Ohio State email system

 Students will be required to use Duo authentication to log into Buckeyemail. Amal Saeed | Photo Editor

If you thought your phone was close to you now, keep it even closer: students, faculty and staff will soon see “send me a push” when logging into their Ohio State emails. 

The two-factor authentication process through Duo push or Buckeyepass — which requires a user to verify their identity from another device — is in the testing phase of joining its security measures with Ohio State’s Office 365 suite of tools, Ben Johnson, university spokesperson, said in an email. 

Duo for Buckeyemail is currently being piloted with a small group of people who are not currently using Outlook 2016 or Outlook mobile to access Ohio State email, which will be the single application for university email going forward, according to the sample message sent out through the pilot and Ohio State’s IT website. 

According to the IT website, there are currently more than 50 commonly used mail applications at the university with over half a million accounts. 

The Office of the Chief Information Officer and the Office of Distance Education and eLearning are leading the pilot project for BuckeyePass and Outlook to refine the system and ensure it will be ready for its full launch in May, Mike Hofherr, vice president and chief information officer, said in an email.  

The decision to add BuckeyePass to Outlook was made because the university saw it as a security measure to protect the university’s information and personal information, Hofherr said.  

“As threats grow, we cannot manage our email service in the same way we did in the past, even if it means making difficult decisions,” Hofherr said .

For some students, the change comes as an unnecessary burden. 

“To me it’s an inconvenience and I don’t really understand the amount of security or extra security it actually provides, especially for email,” Josephine Burke, a second-year in international relations and Spanish, said. 

The implementation of Duo into Office 365 will allow faculty, staff and students a secure application for email and place for collaboration as well asr fewer spam and phishing emails, according to Ohio State’s IT website.