We’ve all heard the stories about major data breaches at some of the largest online businesses. 3 billion Yahoo customers had their usernames and passwords compromised leaving those users vulnerable to hackers. Target was breached in 2013, exposing the information of 41 million customers.
A strong password is no longer enough to protect you and your data. Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) provides a second layer of security beyond your username and password. Think of it this way: your username and password are “something you know.” MFA requires both “something you know” and “something you have.” At Berkeley Lab, the “something you have” is a physical token that will generate a unique one-time password (OTP). Under MFA, a hacker who has your credentials still can’t access your account, because they lack “the something you have.”
Berkeley Lab has implemented MFA protection for your Berkeley Lab Identity. As a computing best practice and to help protect you against credential theft, you can choose to add MFA protection for your Single-Sign-On (SSO) logins, such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Team Drive, LETS, HRIS, etc.
To set-up MFA, simply go here.
Detailed instructions are available in the Multi Factor Authentication Instructions page.
For additional help, create a ticket by emailing [email protected].
Related Sites
Problem
The IT User Support Group has had several calls from customers this morning regarding the endless reboot loop of their system after installing the latest High Sierra macOS update. Error message is,
“The path /System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg appears to be missing or damaged. Quit the installer to restart your computer and try again.”
The system then enters an endless reboot and does not let you log into the computer.
Solution
- Ensure you have a backup of your computer
- Turn off your computer
- Holding down the "Option" key, reboot your computer
- From the boot menu provided, select your hard drive, i.e. Macintosh HD or the name of your hard drive
- Log into your computer
- Open a browser and download the 10.13.2 Combo Update via https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1944?locale=en_US
- Install the update
- Reboot your computer
If you have any questions. please feel free to contact IT at [email protected] or click on the link below.
Backup Solution
Go to the software download page and request a Druva inSync backup account. For more information see, Backups.
Generating, remembering and maintaining unique passwords is challenging and nearly impossible today. As the number of mandatory passwords, password length, and password complexity increases, it becomes harder to remember them without relying on risky alternatives such as writing passwords down or reusing passwords for more than one application. Reuse of a password is one of the biggest security vulnerabilities today. Given the recent high profile breaches of company’s user data, if you reuse a password on more than one site you are at risk for all your other sites. Do you know where you reuse your password?
The solution to address this problem is a password manager. Berkeley Lab has now adopted LastPass as an enterprise password manager and you can download it for free from our software download page, https://software.lbl.gov/swSoftwareDetails.php?applicationID=191.
LastPass resides in your browser and helps you store, manage, and automatically provide account name/password information to web-based applications. As you enter your credentials, LastPass automatically stores it in your safe, encrypted vault. When you are prompted to provide your credentials, LastPass will automatically identify the correct username and password to enter. Access to your vault is through your “master” password. Your master password is the only password you need to remember.
LastPass has additional features:
The ability to sync your vault across any device on any platform at any time
The ability to utilize multi-factor authentication
The ability to share logins and passwords safely across an organization
The ability to run a security check against your password vault to determine where there are duplicates and weaknesses
Don’t wait to get compromised, get your copy of LastPass today.
Related News
- Berkeley Lab IT LastPass website, https://commons.lbl.gov/display/itfaq/LastPass
- Official LastPass Blog - What LastPass users Need to Know about Meltdown and Spectre
