The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced it will require all users to sign into Research.gov with multifactor authentication (MFA) starting Sunday, October 27, 2024.
The InCommon team has been in contact with NSF, and we can confirm that for InCommon-enabled federated access to Research.gov, NSF will not immediately turn on sign-in time MFA checking.
Instead, NSF has agreed, on an interim basis, to continue to accept federated access, provided that your institution confirms MFA capabilities with NSF.
What You Need To Know
122 institutions have an InCommon-registered SSO (Identity Provider) that has been integrated with Research.gov:
- 94 institutions have demonstrated MFA through their use of NIH’s eRA system, and InCommon has provided this list to NSF. Research.gov users at these 94 institutions do NOT need to take action. InCommon has notified the site administrators and executive contacts of these schools.
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28 institutions have NOT used MFA with NIH. InCommon has notified the site administrators and executive contacts of these schools. They need to confirm MFA operation as follows:
- If your institution already has MFA, confirm this with NSF by contacting them at Rgov@nsf.gov and copy help@incommon.org by Friday, October 25. This will allow users to continue federated access to Research.gov via your campus SSO starting on Sunday, October 27.
- If your institution does not have MFA, your users will have to use their Primary Email/NSF ID and password to access Research.gov starting on Sunday, October 27. They will also be prompted to set up a one-time MFA protection for their NSF ID at sign-in.
- For all other InCommon campuses that have not integrated with Research.gov, researchers and research administrators will be required to connect their NSF ID to login.gov MFA per the Dear Colleague Letter.
Next Steps
- Check whether your campus has a working integration by selecting the “Pick your organization” drop-down on the Research.gov sign-in page. Contact Rgov@nsf.gov for more information on how to integrate and make it easier for your researchers to log in.
- Check whether your campus already has MFA confirmed
NSF plans to start enforcing MFA presented through InCommon federation based on the REFEDS MFA Profile in the near term, sometime in the first half of 2025. More information about future deadlines will be forthcoming.
Questions?
The InCommon team is holding two virtual office hours to answer any follow-up questions InCommon participants may have:
- Wednesday, October 23, 2024 at 1:00 pm EST
- Thursday, October 24, 2024 at 4:00 pm EST
Use this Zoom number for the virtual officer hours: https://internet2.zoom.us/j/3193663695?omn=84211055008
Contact help@incommon.org for additional help.