MFA – True Story!

MFA— True Story!

We recommend all our clients roll out Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). We have written some articles and even have a PDF summarizing what it is, why you need it, and how it works. If you need any of these, just call the office and we’ll send them.

Basically, MFA means you provide multiple (more than one) proof that you are who you say you are. This came in quite handy last month for one of our mid-central IL clients, who we’re happy to say is using MFA.

The office manager was receiving multiple requests to approve a sign in request, about 15 of them, and couldn’t figure out what was going on. They called our office (thank goodness) and it turned out that their password had been compromised. Someone was trying to sign into their M365 account and had the correct password, but since MFA was in place, the office manager was receiving the second authentication request to Approve the sign-in request. Now they were able to say ’No’ to the sign-in request, and knowing that someone had the password, we were able to close any open sessions, have them change the password, and they were back to work.

This is a success story! The password was compromised, which can happen, but the second level of authentication was out of the hacker’s control, allowing our client to deny access. This also alerted our client that the password had been compromised, so they were able to change it BEFORE their data was at risk. Good Work! – CMW