What is two factor or multi-factor authentication?
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) uses multiple factors to confirm a person’s identity who requests access to applications, websites or other resources. Multi-factor authentication is a service that adds extra levels of protection. Without multi-factor authentication, a person would ordinarily input a username and password. However, with this authentication method, a person is requested to provide additional information such as a code sent to a mobile phone, a token or even a fingerprint.
Additional authentication methods are categorised in the following three ways:
- Something known – PIN, additional password or answer to a security question
- Something possessed – token, trusted device, smart card or badge
- Something biological – face, fingerprint, retinal scan or other biometric
Multi-factor authentication is moving in lockstep with remote working trends
The COVID-19 pandemic catapulted the world into change, upended daily routines and altered the way people have lived their lives. In the workplace, people went from sitting across each other at a boardroom table to being placed in a square grid alongside colleagues on a virtual zoom session. The pandemic caused a transition to remote working on a scale that is unprecedented.
Companies are projected to continue to enable employees to work outside the office for the foreseeable future, following the accelerated push to remote work in 2020. It is likely that forward-thinking companies will implement remote work to be the norm and recruitment practices will reflect this shift.
As the rate of remote working increases, companies will also proportionately increase their reliance on cloud services, and thus multi-factor authentication, in order to secure their data, resources and information. There is a strong trend of companies moving away from only password-centric authorisation systems and towards more robust MFA methods.
Next steps
Prevention is the best defence. Take the follow pre-emptive steps to protect yourself from an online cyber attack. Where prevention fails, use detection, and where detection fails, you must be able to recover from the incident.
- Review all your online accounts, for example, Facebook, gmail or other online services.
- Check to see whether these online services offer multi-factor authentication methods.
- Enable your MFA for all of those accounts.
To enable two-factor authentication on your Facebook, click Settings and Privacy, Settings, Security and Login, Enable “Use Two Factor Authentication”.
Monitor
To ensure that you do not fall victim to this attack, monitor your digital environment and remain vigilant. Note the following security tips.
- Where available, always opt for using multi-factor authentication method over simpler user name and password authorisation system.
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