What is Two-Factor Authentication? Where Should You Use It?

Enabling two-factor authentication makes it significantly harder for an attacker to compromise your online accounts, but what is it and when should you use it?

We’ve recorded podcasts about it. We’ve discussed it at length in a number of screencasts (which I have kindly embedded below). We’ve mentioned it indirectly in countless articles. But we’ve never taken the time to dedicate an article solely to explaining what two-factor authentication is, how it works, and where you should use it.

What is Two-Factor Authentication?

Two-factor authentication is a feature offered by a number of online service providers that adds an additional layer of security to the account login process by requiring that a user provide two forms of authentication. The first form – in general – is your password. The second factor can be any number of things. Perhaps the most popular second factor of authentication is the SMS or email code. The general theory behind two-factor is that, in order to log in, you must know something and possess something. Thus, in order to access your company’s virtual private network, you might need a password and a USB stick.

Two-factor is no panacea to prevent account hijacks, but it’s a formidable barrier to anything that would try to compromise an account protected by it.

Two-factor is no panacea to prevent account hijacks, but it’s a formidable barrier to anything that would try to compromise an account protected by it. I think it is pretty well known that passwords are severely flawed: weak ones are easy to remember and easy to guess; strong ones are hard to guess but hard to remember. Because of this, people who are already bad at creating passwords, use the same ones over and over again. Two-factor at least makes it so an attacker would have to figure out your password and have access to your second factor, which would generally mean stealing your cell phone or compromising your email account. 

There’s been a race to replace passwords, but nothing has emerged. As it stands, a good two-factor authentication system is about the best protection you can have. The second benefit to two-factor authentication systems, especially the ones that involve the reception of email and SMS passcodes, is that they let you know when someone has guessed your password. As I’ve said probably 1000 times, if you receive a two-factor authentication code on your mobile device or in your email account and you weren’t trying to login to the account associated with it, that’s a pretty good sign that someone has guessed your password and is attempting to hijack your account. When or if this ever happens, it’s probably a good time to go ahead and change your password.

On What Accounts Should I Enable Two-Factor?

The simple rule regarding when and where you should enable two-factor is this: If the service in question offers it and you deem that account valuable, then enable it. So, Pinterest? I don’t know. Maybe. If I had a Pinterest account I probably wouldn’t be willing to go through the hassle of entering two authenticators every time I go to log in. However, your online banking, primary and secondary email (especially if you have a dedicated account recovery email address), valued social networks (Facebook and Twitter perhaps), and definitely your AppleID or iCloud or whatever account controls your Android device, if you have one, should all be protected by a second factor of authentication.

Watch this video demonstrating how to set up two-factor for iCloud

Obviously you would want to consider requiring that second factor for any work-related accounts as well. If you manage websites, you’ll want to consider locking down your registration service account, whether it’s WordPress or GoDaddy or NameCheap or some other. We also recommend turning it on for any account that may have a credit or debit card associated with it: PayPal, eBay, eTrade, etc. Again, your decision to turn on two-factor should be based on how devastating it would be to lose access to any account that offers the feature.

This video demonstrates how to set up two-factor on Facebook

 

Are There Any Other Forms of Two-Factor?

Thus far, we have discussed two-factor as a code sent to your mobile device or email account and as a USB stick often used for VPN access along with a password. There are also keychain code generators, like RSA’s SecureID, which are generally used in corporate environments. At this point, these are the predominate forms of two-factor. However, there are certainly others as well.

Transaction authentication numbers (TAN) are a bit of an old fashioned second factor form. They were popular in Europe, and I have never actually used one myself, but if I understand correctly, your bank would send you a list of TANs (on paper) and every time you performed a transaction online you would enter one of those TANs to authenticate it. The ATM is another old-school example of two-factor authentication. The thing you know if your PIN; the thing you possess is your debit card.

From paper to the future, there has been much buzz about biometric two-factor. Some systems require a password and a fingerprint, iris scan, heartbeat, or some other biological measure.

Wearables are gaining momentum too. Some systems require you to wear a special bracelet or other accessory with some sort of embedded radio frequency chip. I have read research papers about electromagnetic tattoos that could be used for a second factor of authentication.

Both Google and Facebook have mobile application code generators, which let users create their own one-time password in place of an SMS or email code.

This video demonstrates how to set up two-factor on Gmail

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