Two-Factor Authentication (for staff) to access MISTAR, goes into effect August 27, 2021

2FA Mistar

Due to enhanced cybersecurity insurance requirements in response to the dramatic rise in cyber-attacks, districts must ensure that staff pass two-factor authentication to gain access to personally identifiable data (PII), including student data within MISTAR. Districts, including ours, are required to enable two-factor authentication for staff accessible applications (Q and Student Scan) by August 27, 2021.

NOTE: The Student Connection and Parent Connection applications accessed by students and parents ARE NOT required to be enabled at this time.

  • Upon logging in, each staff user will be required to retrieve and enter a system generated six-digit number.
  • The number will be emailed to their email address and will come from each user’s own email address.
  • If logging into the mobile app and notifications for the app are activated on the device, the number may also be received via push notification.
  • Staff will need to authenticate only once per day (as opposed to each login throughout the day) using the same browser and same device. Each browser or device will require authentication each day access is attempted.

2FA for MISTAR

Access to Google Drive Cloud Assignment service to be “hidden”, effective August 1st

In two of last October’s P-CCS Technology Newsletters (10/07/2020 and 10/21/2020), the technology department had blog posts about the Google Drive Cloud Assignment service (Google Drive Cloud Assignment Going Away in Canvas and Google Assignment Clarification Post). As we shared in those blog posts, the GDCA service is an older service of Canvas’s Google Integration and its technical support and development were effectively being curtailed by Canvas. Canvas’ advice to our district at the time has not changed, if anything, it has grown more insistent — wean users from any reliance on the GDCA service, and for those looking for Google integration continue to direct them to only use our newer, supported service, Google Assignment (associated with Google’s updated assignment creation/management tool).

On August 1, 2021, as we noted last October, we will be hiding access to the service; by hiding access to the service instead of removing it altogether, while teachers will no longer be able to create new Google Drive Cloud assignments, they will still be able to open previously created Drive Cloud assignments in Canvas, both to review them and, when interested, to convert them into Google Assignments.

For information and help on how to convert a GDCA to a Google Assignment, check out the video below:

For more information on Google Assignments, please click here.