By: MorraLee Keller, Senior Director of Strategic Programming
Reading time: 3 min.
In July, the Department of Education implemented additional upgrades to customers who wish to log-in to the studentaid.gov website. The upgrade announced most pertinent to those of us who serve students and families is related to the FSA ID. A multi-factor authentication (MFA) process has been added when using an FSA ID to log-in to studentaid.gov. The process took effect
on July 10, 2022. Therefore, any student or parent who creates an FSA ID after this date will be subject to use the MFA process when logging into to the FAFSA. Those who created FSA IDs prior to July 10 will be subjected to the process on a rolling
basis starting in November 2022.
Setting up the FSA ID will still include verifying an email address or phone number to establish the ID. NCAN strongly encourages you to coach students and families to include verifying the email address AND phone number whenever possible. This will help
in the future as people log-in to complete the FAFSA. Those creating the ID will now be offered information about selecting an ID authentication application app to be downloaded to their mobile device. We strongly encourage parents and students to
do this if possible. We want families to have every option available to them when logging into the FAFSA so that nothing impedes that process. The one additional feature is that upon setting up the FSA ID, the person will be presented with a one-time
back-up code. When this code appears on the screen, IT SHOULD BE WRITTEN DOWN as it will not appear again, nor can you log back into the FSA ID and see the code. This is designed to be a last resort for logging into the studentaid.gov website when
all other methods are not available. Federal Student Aid has provided NCAN PowerPoint slides that display these final MFA steps when setting up the ID. We encourage
you to download these slides and use them in your training of advisors and sharing with students and parents. Another suggestion: if you provide a document to your students to write down all things associated with their FSA ID-username, password,
answers to question, etc., you should add a field to that form called “back-up code” so that they can write the down when it appears on their screen.
NCAN fully supports cybersecurity and privacy for our students and families. However, these additional steps required to be able to log into the FAFSA may likely create barriers when there is limited internet or cell reception, school district policies
restricting cell phones or blocking web addresses, dead cellphones, etc. NCAN suggests that as you prepare to assist with FAFSA completion, you make sure the conditions are available to complete the MFA. You will also notice that on the studentaid.gov
website that this new process is referred to as “two-step verification.” NCAN has suggested to FSA that they reconsider the naming of the process because there is another critical financial aid process called “verification” and we do not want to confuse
our students and families.
FSA has indicated it is in the process of updating resources related to the new FSA ID process. Here are several links to information about the new process. We hope you find these helpful:
NCAN will continue to share any new resources/tools developed to support this new process. Please feel free to share any issues or challenges your students’ experience. We ask that you take screenshots whenever possible and send the description of the
issues encountered to MorraLee Keller at kellerm@ncan.org.
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