Information Technology Updates

As QR codes continue to be heavily used by legitimate organizations—from Super Bowl advertisements to enforcing parking fees and fines, scammers have crept in to abuse the very technology for their nefarious purposes. The rest of the story is here: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/qr-codes-used-in-fake-parking-tickets-surveys-to-steal-your-money/

On February 1, UNI made our first conversion to Duo's Universal Prompt for accessing Microsoft 365 resources. See https://it.uni.edu/updates/duo-universal-prompt for details about that event. Over the next two weeks, we'll be converting a number of other uses of Duo to the Universal Prompt. Many of your day-to-day Duo encounters will be included. Below is a sampling of the applications that will be converted on the indicated day. A complete list can be found at https://it.uni.edu/shibboleth-and-duo-universal-prompt-upgrades

• Thursday, April 20 - Portal (MyUNIverse) and SIS
• Tuesday, April 25 - Many external, lower-use resources, e.g., Accommodate, CourseLeaf, Handshake, Jobs UNI, Marketing Cloud, Maxient, Qualtrics, Salesforce, etc.
• Thursday, April 27 - Many internal and/or higher-use resources, e.g., Google apps, eBiz, Zoom, ServiceHub, CBORD GET, VPN, Docusign, EZ Proxy, FAMIS 360, etc.

More details on Universal Prompt can be found at https://guide.duo.com/universal-prompt

Duo is migrating from their long-used iframe authentication window to what they have chosen to call the Universal Prompt. When and how we migrate is up to us but there is a deadline of March 30, 2024 when the iframe method will no longer be available.

We are planning to take our first step in this migration this coming Wednesday, February 1. Only logins to Microsoft 365 resources will be affected on Feb 1. There will be several differences that you may see:

• The appearance of the Duo prompt.  See the guide page link below for samples.
• The way in which Duo will prompt for your second factor, i.e., a Push may happen automatically if that is the most secure method available for your account. 
  • If you need to interact differently with Duo for a login, cancel the first choice used and click "Other options" to choose a different method.
  • The method that you use for that application will become the default method for your next use of that same application.
  • If you need to change that default, cancel the request, click "Other options", and choose your new default method.

If you have questions about this change or the options available to you, please contact the Service Desk at 319-273-5555.

 All details and information about Duo's Universal Prompt may be found at https://guide.duo.com/universal-prompt

We took a break during the pandemic but the Phishing Education project is returning this spring. With the help of our vendor, realistic phishing messages will be sent to faculty and staff over the coming months. No punitive action will result from this exercise. All individual results will be kept private although large scale results and trends may be shared with appropriate partners. The sole purpose of the project is to educate the community and provide examples of things to watch for in real-life phishing messages.