By Chris Edwards
Manager, IT Services
Today’s digital world can often feel very alarming and insecure. Stories abound of identity theft, hackers stealing information from hundreds or thousands of victims, and email scams to swipe your account passwords.
How can you protect yourself and your organization?
Identity theft and hacked information often stem from circumstances outside your control, but losing your accounts and other access points is something you can protect yourself from with plenty of diligence and a touch of skepticism.
One powerful tool in guarding against hacking is the use of multi-factor authentication (MFA). Simply put, this means requiring more than one step or piece of information to access an account. More and more services and websites are offering this as an option, and it’s something you should definitely take advantage of.
You likely already use MFA in your regular personal banking. If you’ve ever used an ATM, you’ve used multi-factor authentication. Possession of the card and knowledge of your PIN act as two separate ways of verifying your identity to access your accounts. If a thief has your PIN but not your card, or vice-versa, they can’t get into your bank account.
Online banking has long been at the forefront of this, from asking for multiple pieces of information to separate physical tokens like bank cards or even devices which generate a second password.
But now, as our online and social media accounts become more valuable and thus more likely to be attacked, more and more providers are offering similar services to help protect your account. Facebook and Twitter both offer MFA options to help protect your account. Chances are your email provider does as well.
Using these methods to increase the security of your accounts does make them slightly more ponderous to access. It often involves having a temporary access key sent to you via text message in addition to your regular login information. If your bank requires an application on your smartphone to access your online account, you must have a smartphone, and you must have it with you in order to do online banking.
But having a vastly improved layer of security can be well worth the price of adding a few seconds every time you access critical accounts.
There are also quite a few services you can utilize to provide two-factor authentication to your staff and even to your customers, depending on your needs. Some of this would require a dedicated professional to implement, but the additional protection provided by ensuring that it takes more than a username and password to breach your security is worth that expense.
A hacker can potentially obtain an accounts password, but how would they also obtain that user’s cellphone?
When a service provider offers this additional layer of security, you should take advantage of their offer. If you provide online services, either to staff or to clients, it is well worth your time to provide the same offered security to them.
While multi-factor authentication cannot solve all of your digital security issues, it provides an easy-to-use method of determining that a person is who they say they are when they try to access an account online, and blocking nefarious people looking to do you or your organization harm.
If you need to consult with an expert about protecting your company’s information systems, please call Chris Edwards at (317) 613-7855 or email [email protected].