UW-Eau Claire made the switch from its old multi-factor authentication (MFA), Duo Security to Okta Verify on Jan. 8. The switch has had mixed reactions from students and staff.

UW-Eau Claire first sent out emails to students during winter break, notifying them that the switch would be happening. The email said the new authentication would be cost-effective for the school.

Kent Gerberich, the director of Learning & Technology Services, said the switchover is going well, and it helps that students had previously signed up before the change.

“From my standpoint, it went pretty smoothly,” Gerberich said. “We did a lot of communication upfront through multiple channels to make sure students and staff were aware of the change. We had a lot of people proactively signing up prior to the switch happening.”

Fourth-year elementary education student Chloe Moore said she did not like the MFA change.

“I like it when I do it on my phone it can just be a push notification,” Moore said. “But when I am on my computer and I have to type in a code, I get really mad.”

First-year healthcare administration student, Adrienne Toberman said she thought the new authenticator app was okay, but had minor issues when logging in on her phone.

“Okta is OK,” Toberman said. “I’d rather do it without the Face ID, it makes it hard when I have to check stuff at night and the brightness isn’t up on my phone.”

Savanna Gronski, who works at UW-Eau Claire’s Bookstore, said there were minor difficulties for students checking out books and for staff to log into the system when the switch first went.

“The first day that it switched over was a bit of a hassle for us here,” Gronski said. “We could not get signed into CampS or anything, so checking out books was very difficult.”

Gronski said the issue was fixed the same day and her experience has been seamless ever since.

Moore said she also preferred Duo over Okta, and the change seemed like the school was ‘cheaping’ out.

“I think the university just cheaped out onto a worse platform, and it shows,” Moore said.

Gerberich said the change to Okta is a change that is meant to help lower costs and will be used by all Universities of Wisconsin campuses.

“This is actually part of a UW System initiative,” Gerberich said. “All campuses are moving to Okta, at least the 11 comprehensive. The idea was that by packaging for all 11 campuses, we could save a substantial amount of money. We are saving over $70,000 by grouping.”

Gerberich said he will be meeting with the Student Senate to further gauge reactions. He said that so far the reaction has been good from what he noticed, but is hopeful that if something was not, he could find out what went wrong and how to improve it moving forward.

More information on Okta and general troubleshooting can be found on UW-Eau Claire’s website.

Boggess can be reached at [email protected].