Why is Two Factor Authentication Important For Your Business to be Secure?

Passwords are commonly re-used across different accounts, personal or official and your employees are no strangers to this practice. A weak and easily guessed password is a vulnerability that hackers get excited about due to the increased ease of data breach on the hacker’s part. To protect your company from the shambles arisen from hacked passwords, implement a two-factor authentication.  

What is two-factor authentication? 

Frequently, a login involves username and password completion for access to be allowed. This is single factor authentication.  

Two-factor authentication is merely another step added for login completion. In addition to a password, a second step must be completed for access. This can include a code send to you by SMS or email, app verification, a security key which needs to be plugged in, facial recognition and fingerprinting.   

Although two-factor authentication is more often implemented, multi-factor authentication adds further steps to the login process, giving further security.  

How will it aid education security? 

As well as improved security for individual users who decide to opt for two-factor authentication, businesses can also benefit from the increased layer of protection. If a threat actor learns of an employee’s login details, the second factor serves as an additional layer of prevention against the threat actor gaining access to the company’s system. For businesses, the most secure form of two factor authentication is to implement the use of app-generated codes or a physical authentication key.  

Although it is not impossible to get past two factor authentication, it is key in preventing threat actors from continuing with their hacking as the second factor typically involves something that is with the target such as their phone, fingerprint, or security key. Your business becomes less attractive to cybercriminals as prevention is the first and most important step.  

Companies need to do their due diligence to protect their client’s personal data. 

If your company collects personal data from your clients and employees, it is your responsibility to ensure that the data remains safe, secure, and inaccessible to unauthorised figures. Even if the data may not seem of high value, it most likely is and you have made a compromising underestimation. Data has overtaken oil as the world’s most sought-after recourse and hackers can find many uses of the information that has been entrusted to your company.  

Enabling two factor authentication   

How you enable two factor authentication can vary depending on the account you wish to increase security for.   

There are many different ways to implement authentication including:  

• SMS Authentication- a sent code which can only be validated once within a certain time frame. This is not the most secure option nevertheless it offers greater protection than systems that rely on single factor authentication.  
• App Authentication – code sent by an app which needs to be validated. This is more advantageous as no mobile signal is needed unlike the SMS method. Also sometimes, a longer time is needed for the code to arrive by SMS however with app authentication, the code can arrive in 30 seconds.  
• Physical Authentication Key – a physical key which needs to be inserted in addition to the first step for access to be allowed. 
• Email – similar to the other methods, this involves a code being sent to your email which can only be used once and must be done so in the given time frame.  
• Backup codes – this is used if you lose your two-factor verification method for example, your phone. 

Choosing the suitable provider of two factor authentication for your business 

There are multiple things you need to consider selecting the right two factor authentication provider.  

1. The first step is to make sure that the provider has a global reach including different mobile networks, hubs, and country codes that your clients and future clients may hold. You need to know where your customers are to find this out.  
2. You will need to ask your potential prover direct questions about fraud prevention. The provider needs to be able to provide industry standard algorithms. You need to ask about approved IP addresses and secure HTTPS connections, how delivery reports will be presented and how you will be able to view and access the data related to your business. 
3. It is ideal if the provider offers customer support for no extra costs. Open communication must be available in which you can contact the provider on your end or the customer’s end. 

How Securiwiser can help 

The task of being responsible for large amounts of sensitive data of your clients and employees may seem like a daunting task. The aim of Securiwiser is to provide effective cybersecurity consultation to assure our clients that this can in fact be carried out with full confidence.  

By joining Securiwiser, we can provide our clients with daily scans to alert businesses and independent users of underlying compromises and provide advise on how to handle arising issues in the most cost effective and time saving manner.