Fairfield University has switched from NetID to Okta for single sign-on purposes. Most apps seen on students’ my.fairfield pages have already migrated over, but there are seven that haven’t been changed. These seven apps are listed on the my.fairfield home page.
Information and Technology Services has yet to share when the process will be finalized, though according to an announcement on the my.fairfield home page, the remaining apps “will be converted to Okta in the following days.”
The decision likely comes as a result of Okta’s connection to Duo Mobile, which the university added as a multifactor authentication step in February. As a result, students now have to enter a four-digit code when accessing my.fairfield from off-campus locations. This process, unlike Okta, followed a long rollout period during which students and faculty were prompted to enroll in Duo Mobile in waves.
Students have had mixed experiences with the changes from NetID to Okta. Sophomore Aida Ehlers shared, “It refused to remember my username and password, causing me to have to input it every time I wanted to use anything on my.fairfield portal.”
Junior Megan McCurrie had a similar issue, stating that it was “inconvenient” to have to retype her password each time.
Ehlers added that it was a “disruption” to make the change in the middle of the semester.
Sophomore Parker Chieffalo was in agreement. “It felt a little odd and disruptive to do a month into the fall semester,” she said.
Despite this, her experience with Okta was more positive than Ehlers’s. “Thanfully I haven’t experienced any trouble with the migration to Okta so far,” Chieffalo said.
The decision to switch to Okta, however, seems less controversial than the switch to Duo Mobile, where there were multiple posts on Fizz complaining about the change, some with nearly 2,000 upvotes. One student wrote, “I’d rather somebody hack me than have to do this Duo Mobile s–t again.” This post received 1,100 upvotes. Meanwhile, Okta has yet to solicit a single reaction from Fizz.
Though signing into my.fairfield may look a little different as a result of the change, ITS has confirmed that there will be no changes to the portal and students will continue to use my.fairfield to access all their essential applications.