As Jack Wood, student, logged into his university accounts on Nov. 11, an unfamiliar authentication prompt greeted him.
The Duo multi-factor authenticator, a fixture of any Boise State experience, was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Microsoft Entra took its place.
“It wouldn’t refresh once I put the code in, and that was kind of pissing me off,” Wood said. “It was not showing up because it wouldn’t reload, but I think it works now.”
Another student, Amelia Nowinski, described the switch to using Entra, the new authentication platform, as “neutral”.
“I feel like it always seems like a hassle,” she said. “Whether it’s the Duo app or the new one.”
Noticing no significant change between the two systems, both students asked a similar question.
Why did Boise State make the transition?
According to Brandon Bowlin, chief information security officer, the change came about due to two main factors: affordability and House Bill 35.
The Office of Information Technology became aware of an increase in Duo subscription costs in late 2024, two years before the contract’s renewal in January 2026, prompting them to consider alternatives.
“We typically sign multi-year contracts when we do licensing agreements with vendors, and as with everything in the technical space, subscriptions tend to increase in price,” Bowlin said. “The same happened with Duo.”
On Jan. 22, 2025, the Idaho legislature introduced House Bill 35, requiring all state agencies to implement multi-factor authentication services when accessing state networks and resources.
Multi-factor authentication systems such as Duo and Entra create an additional layer of security by prompting users with multiple identity checks. After users input their account passwords, they must also provide a single-use code to verify their login attempt.
“The university was already compliant with the law, but [House Bill 35] did change the scope for how we had implemented multi-factor authentication, [and] it was going to increase it to include all users of the [university] environment,” Bowlin said. “It was going to cost us about six times as much to remain in Duo.”
Following the decision to switch applications, the university formed an internal project team to determine the timing of the transition.
“It was a lot of back and forth with lots of different groups to determine timing, scope and any potential hurdles that we were going to have,” he added.
The team weighed general access to students on campus, such as summer availability versus traditional semester schedules, and avoided dates when the switch might interrupt exam dates.
Anticipating a possible increase in technical difficulties, Bowlin said the team also collaborated with the Help Desk to “augment” response times, including an all-day conference to prepare IT employees.
Theo French, a Help Desk zone support analyst, expects Entra to reduce response times, citing the app’s use of smaller authentication codes.
“It’s probably just going to be the same old, same old,” French said. “I imagine that in two or three weeks, everything’s gonna return to the status quo.”
