The Importance of Two-Factor Authentication

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Billions of stolen credentials in numerous breaches have prompted Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Mail.ru and other webmail service providers to scrutinize a report by Hold Security regarding the disturbing discovery.

Yahoo and Google confirmed they were reviewing the report, while Microsoft said it had security measures in place that could detect compromised accounts, request additional information to initiate verifications with account owners, and help them regain exclusive access.



Today, it is no longer enough to protect your accounts with a strong password: it is advisable, even necessary, to use strong authentication, also called two-factor authentication (2FA: two-factor authentication) .



Table of Contents
Caution Is De rigueur to protect your accounts
What is Two-Factor Authentication?
How to Use Two-Factor Authentication 2FA?
The Second Factor of Digital Authentication
Conclusion
Caution Is De rigueur to protect your accounts
You should now know how important it is to use very complex and always canada telegram data different passwords, especially for your email software . Similarly, it is becoming essential to use tools to be able to remember the many passwords (and all different) that we find ourselves managing.

It is estimated that the average user today has around a hundred passwords: it is impossible to remember them all.

But even if we practice the good rules described above to protect your emailing lists in particular , we cannot exclude the possibility that a password is stolen or discovered. Maybe not because of us, but it could still happen. There are frequent cases of site breaches (data breaches) with the massive theft of thousands or millions of passwords: in these cases, our passwords end up in the black market of the web and someone could use them.

Authentication based solely on a password is therefore inherently weak, even if the password set is strong, because the security of the account depends on only one factor, namely the password. To raise the levels of security, the techniques of the "strong" have therefore been introduced in the authentication methods: authentication with two or more factors.



double authentication

What is Two-Factor Authentication?
Also called 2FA or MFA (multi-factor authentication), it represents additional security and is today the most secure protection system we have to protect our accounts.



In fact, it can no longer be considered a “luxury” to be applied only to bank accounts, but must be used as much as possible, especially for all personal and professional accounts in which important data is located. Those to protect most carefully are email accounts (if our email is hacked, our whole life will be exposed), cloud services and any corporate account.



To access any digital system (computer, ATM, website or other) we must first "introduce ourselves" by entering your username. Then we will have to "prove" that it is us: this is the "authentication" phase that can take place in three different ways: Knowledge: "Something you know", for example a password or a PIN code. Possession: "Something you have", a smartphone or a security token (those little "keys" that banks give us and that generate a 6-digit code). Inherence: "Something you are", such as a fingerprint, voice tone, face, iris or any other biometric data.



In many cases, authentication is done only with the password: this is one-factor authentication. Instead, we talk about 2FA if at least two of the three factors listed above are used. There is also three-factor authentication (3FA), obviously if three factors are required. It is much less used.



How to Use Two-Factor Authentication 2FA?
Using 2FA is not difficult and therefore we have no reason not to adopt it: after entering the password (first factor) of your account, you will be asked to enter a second factor, which in most cases is a numeric code. This second factor is usually obtained via the smartphone (in the form of SMS or via a special application) or via a physical token . Unlike the password, the second code is in fact unassailable, because it is generated pseudo-randomly according to a specific algorithm and has a very limited duration in time (usually 30 seconds).



For this reason, it is also defined as OTP: "a one-time password". The second factor can be, in other cases, biometric ("a thing that you are"). We have an example of this in the smartphone applications that banks provide us: to open the application and also to carry out operations (for example: make a bank transfer), we are asked for a second authentication with fingerprint or facial recognition.