In order to decisively counteract the risk of cyber attacks and to intensify the protection of data and devices, the University of Cologne is introducing multi-factor authentication (MFA) for logins to IT services.
This involves one or more independent factors that must be used in addition to the user name and password when logging in with a staff, student or guest account. This increases protection against unauthorized access to services, software and data.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is implemented at the University of Cologne with Cisco Duo. Cisco Duo is a system that includes several authentication options as a so-called second factor.

The Cisco Duo authentication option we recommend is the “Duo Mobile” app, which is available for the Android, iOS, iPadOS and watchOS operating systems. You can use the app on your smartphones or tablets to confirm your identity to systems and services when logging in.

Using the app as a second factor offers you the advantage of being able to use Cisco Duo anywhere, as smartphones or tablets are carried almost everywhere. It is also very easy to use compared to the other authentication options. Another advantage is the access protection of your smartphones and tablets, which are usually protected by PIN, facial recognition or similar.

If you cannot or do not want to use a smartphone, employees of the University of Cologne have the option of authenticating using an additional device, a so-called token. These tokens can be borrowed free of charge. You can find more information here.

Technically savvy users can also use their own FIDO2-enabled tokens (such as Yubikey). However, due to the variety of devices on the market, we cannot offer any in-depth technical support here. Information on the basic setup can be found here. This will be available in english soon.

Before you can use Cisco Duo, you need to register. You can find all the information you need here:

Instructions: Initial registration in Cisco Duo

Currently, only our VPN service is secured by Cisco Duo. If you would like to use VPN, it is therefore essential that you also use Cisco Duo when logging in.

Please note: The mandatory use of Cisco Duo for the VPN service currently only affects certain groups of people who will be informed directly.

In the future, there will be other services that will use Cisco Duo.