QUANTICO, Va. – Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) rolled out a new multifactor authentication (MFA) process for the National Background Investigation Services (NBIS) program and its two interfaces on May 14 — the electronic application (eApp) and NBIS Agency. This action was required to strengthen the cybersecurity posture of the NBIS program, align under Department of Defense (DoD) Zero Trust and meet the requirement of the DoD Risk Management Framework.
After the MFA deployment, eApp and NBIS Agency have been operational, but login issues for customers persist and are ongoing. Some customers and industry partners continue to face accessibility issues in NBIS Agency, while applicants are having challenges setting up their password and profile in eApp.
We understand the negative impacts to our customers, and we are working quickly and diligently to solve the technical problems.
What Have We Done
We deployed the
Multi-Factor Authentication resource and information webpage on the DCSA website to provide transparency regarding the ongoing support issues and updates surrounding login issues with NBIS and eApp.
Each user group -- applicants vice NBIS Agency users – are experiencing different issues which require different solutions.
For NBIS Agency users, our technical teams continue to diagnose the root cause of persistent accessibility issues. They identified several contributing factors, including agency-specific IT environments, number of personas in our system, and experience management. The solutions to the various issues vary depending on access and require different levels of engagement to resolve.
For our applicants using eApp, we attached a step-by-step job aid to Applicant notification emails to walk through the login process without needing to call the help desk.
We also posted this job aid, fact sheets, and specific guidance (e.g., password reset and CAC/PIV) on the
MFA resource and information page. You can also get there by clicking on the banner on our homepage:
www.dcsa.mil.
To address long wait times for Help Desk support, we implemented several measures to bring down the wait times and work through the email backlog. These measures included surging resources, authorizing overtime, and increasing messaging to customers to understand and resolve issues.
What We Are Still Doing
For NBIS Agency users, our liaisons are personally reaching out to customer agencies to proactively understand their issues and coordinate mass support sessions. For example, we identified 10 agencies in which their IT environment has an incompatibility that must be resolved at the enterprise level, and we are engaging directly with them.
For applicants using eApp, we are continuing to update the
MFA resource and information page. We are also hosting large-scale Webex help sessions to provide eApp walkthroughs for applicants completing standard forms.
- Sessions will be held Monday - Friday from 9 - 11 a.m. EDT and 1 - 3 p.m. EDT starting May 22 (sessions are not held on weekends and federal holidays)
- Sessions are only for eApp users completing standard forms
- Click here to join the meeting
Please encourage your eApp users attempting to login and complete their standard forms to attend these sessions and use the
MFA resource and information page before contacting the help desk.
For those that still require Help Desk support, we are focused on resolving customer issues as quickly as possible and working through the backlog of emails. We believe these measures will have a positive impact on customer experience.
We appreciate your patience as we work to get back to business as usual.
Our Commitment
We are committed to learning from this incident and are capturing lessons learned to drive future operations to better meet your needs. We were already in the process of building a more customer-focused mindset in DCSA, but we obviously have more work to do.
Our commitment to you; we will listen to your concerns, engage early and often, and provide routine updates as we roll out our new capabilities in the future.
We will continue to provide additional details as they become available. Users requiring assistance should call or email the DCSA Help Desk at 878-274-1344 and
dcsa.ITSupport@mail.mil.
- Operating Hours: 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. EDT Monday through Friday; 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday; closed Sunday
We appreciate your patience as we work to resolve these issues.
For additional information about the rollout: