ANNOUNCEMENT: Blackbaud ID MFA Requirement in October

Derek Nichols
Derek Nichols Blackbaud Employee
Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud K-12 Education Solutions™ Blog
We have an important announcement to make about an upcoming requirement to have multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled on users' Blackbaud ID (BBID) usernames and passwords.At Blackbaud, we take the protection of your data very seriously, and we understand that the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your data is vital to your organization. To help safeguard your organization and your data, Blackbaud will soon require faculty and staff users of Blackbaud's education management solutions to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on their Blackbaud ID (BBID) username and password. These users have security roles that are application, employee, or volunteer types.



What is MFA and why is Blackbaud requiring it?

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) requires a user to successfully validate at least two of three factors to authenticate before gaining access to your solution and data. Blackbaud ID will require MFA using your password and a unique, time-based, one-time code accessed on a secondary device. We are proactively making this change, following industry-standard security measures, to help safeguard your organization and your data.



When is this happening?

In October 2023, Blackbaud will begin to require MFA for customers using Blackbaud's education management solutions. Users of the following Blackbaud solutions are already required to use MFA with BBID and will not be impacted further:
  • Raiser’s Edge®
  • Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT®
  • Financial Edge®
  • Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT®
  • Blackbaud Merchant Services®
  • eTapestry®
If your organization has not yet established an SSO connection this summer, then we will send you an email with the exact date on which your users will be required to use MFA. After this date faculty, staff, and administrative users will no longer be able to access Blackbaud Education Management® until they have set up MFA. Encourage your users to act now by enabling MFA on their Blackbaud ID if they have not already done so.



Who is exempt?

Students, Alumni, Parents, and non-administrative users of Blackbaud's education management solutions will not be required to adopt MFA with BBID. These users only have security roles of the constituent or other type.



Additionally, users who authenticate via Single Sign-on (SSO), Sign in with Google, or Sign in with Apple will not be impacted by any enforcement of MFA, regardless of their role(s) in their product. Blackbaud strongly recommends establishing an SSO connection with your Identity Provider for easier management of your users, for the optimal login experience, and to avoid the MFA requirement.



Where can I find more information?

To help your organization prepare, we have created this Knowledgebase article. You can also join Product Manager Jessi Walters in a webinar on February 23, 2023 to learn what tools are available to manage the rollout of MFA for your community – register here.



Thank you for your partnership.

Categories