Online security: Closer look at Two Factor Authentication

Being secure online and ensuring there's no unauthorized access is more important than ever, now that most of our lives are digital. Two Factor Authentication are one of the solutions that works to secure our online presence

Written by Tomas Lyngen

Published: 05 Feb 2022

If you're using a bank or paying online, there's a huge change you're already using 2FA (Two Factor Authentication) already

2FA is when you need to enter a code, after logging into a service to verify that it's truly you. Some also call it 2SV (2-Step Verification), but we'll be calling it 2FA in this article

What is Two Factor Authentication

Two Factor Authentication (2FA) is an extra layer of security, when you traverse online. This is to prevent unauthorized access to your account and to verify it's truly you who are performing the actions

Traditionally you only needed to enter username and password when logging into a site. Now many sites, especially sites with a lot of sensitive information (such as banking), have the option (or flat out require) the use of 2FA

App / SMS / E-mail / Physical Authenticator

There's many option to receive the one time password (OTP), but app is becoming the most common option

Physical Authenticator

This option still exist, but is getting less and less common. Today it's mostly replaced by an app solution, performing the same task

It's a small device, that generates a code on a small screen. Which you then type into the service you try to access. Some also have number pad, where you'd need to enter a pin to generate the code

App

This is the most common way today, as it's considered as a very secure method and doesn't require any extra hardware

SMS

You receive the code on an SMS

E-mail

You receive the code on an e-mail

How does 2FA protect me?

By adding this extra security layer to your account, makes it much harder for anyone to hack your account

If someone gets hold of your username and password, they still can't access your account without the OTP code. As the OTP codes constantly renews and have very short shelf life. It's not a code you can just guess or easily brute force (keep entering codes until you get it right)

How to enable 2FA

This depends on the site you're using. Banking will enable it by default (SMS/e-mail or require you to use an app). If the sites support it and it's not enabled by default. You can normally enable it from the settings of the website / app

Most big companies today support 2FA, such as; Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Nintendo and Cloudflare

Tags: #2FA