Fidelity Investments and TIAA, U-M’s trusted partners in administering its retirement savings plans, continue to offer new, proactive tools to protect your accounts.
Use Your Voice as Protection
Innovative tools include MyVoice and Voiceprint, which act like verbal fingerprints. These free services may appeal to people who aren’t comfortable with user names, PINs and passwords, or with managing their accounts entirely through computers.
MyVoice and Voiceprint use unique characteristics of your voice to create a one-of-a-kind verbal pattern. This digitally-encrypted pattern becomes a highly individualized verification to ensure the security of your accounts. And these tools allow you to access your accounts exclusively by phone.
View more information about MyVoice on Fidelity’s Security Overview page. TIAA also offers biometric thumbprints and digital facial features as you-only identifiers.
More Ways to Protect Yourself
Strong Usernames, PINs and Passwords
The best defense are unique identifiers. It might seem inconvenient to add exclamation marks and other less common characters to your passwords, but it also makes your passwords harder to hack.
Change your password on a regular basis, as well, and don’t re-use old passwords. If an outside security service from your credit card or an app on your phone alerts you that your password has been compromised, change it immediately.
U-M's Information Technology Services' (ITS) tips to create strong university passwords can be applied to your retirement and personal passwords, as well.
2-factor/Multifactor Authentication
This type of security adds an additional layer of protection after you access your accounts by PIN and/or password. You may receive a numerical code sent to your cell phone number on file or be required to provide an answer to a pre-determined question to ensure access to your accounts.
U-M’s Duo authentication system is a type of multifactor identification.
Additional Resources
TIAA's webinar lounge offers a pre-recorded webcast titled "Cyber security: How to protect you, your family and your money." Access is free and convenient. Just click on the TIAA event page to watch the hour-long video when your schedule allows.
Fidelity and TIAA also provide articles, webinars and toolkits to assist in securing your retirement and personal data. For more information, view Fidelity’s resource page and TIAA’s “data protection” page.
You'll have to log in to Fidelity and TIAA to access most of these resources.
ITS also offers significant information about protecting yourself in the digital universe.
