THE IMPORTANCE OF TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION (2FA)
In today’s life where we trust the internet with our most important and private information both personal and professional, Multi-factor authentication (MFA) or Two-factor authentication (2FA) is becoming the norm in terms of cyber security.
In the early days, the only password to be remembered was your short, simple, and unsafe email password, eg ‘password123’. Nowadays, we deal with lots of complex passwords for countless accounts on a daily basis without even thinking about it, and for a while, using the same complex-ish password for all your accounts was ok. However, with the unstoppable growth of services in the cloud, interconnected applications, hacking and phishing attacks all over the place, and our complete dependency of the internet, the need of using strong unique passwords and enabling extra layers of security to login into our accounts is a must! This is when Two-factor authentication comes in place providing that much needed extra security.
How does it work?
Today, most online services offer the option to enable 2FA. When logging in to your Google account for example and going to your account settings and security, you will find the option to enable a
2-Setp Verification method.
There are different 2FA methods, being the authenticator apps one of the most common ones such as the Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator app. However, we recommend using the Authy app which unlike the Google or Microsoft apps, it offers the ability to sync all your 2FA codes across multiple devices and it also has a desktop app which is very handy when working on a PC and having to login on many different accounts every day.
After you link your account to one of these apps, for example your Google account, it will generate a unique code that changes every 30 seconds. When logging in to your account with your email address and password, it will then ask you to enter the 2FA code as an extra layer of security to sign in. This means that even if someone gains access to your username and password, they will not be able to sign in anyways.
In conclusion, we strongly recommend starting using a 2FA method in all your accounts when possible. 2FA is here to stay and stick to our daily lives along with passwords.