What is Two Factor Authentication?
We have all heard stories of people getting their email or user account hacked. Cyber criminals use very clever websites and emails to trick us into handing over logon details. No matter how careful we are there is always the chance that we accidentally give something away we don’t mean to. To try and stop the criminals we can add extra layer of security to an account by using Two Factor Authentication, also known as 2FA. What this means is that you need more than just a password to access your account, without this extra piece of information the hackers are unable to logon.
How does it work?
To logon using Two Factor Authentication you need to provide something else along with your password to access the system. Office 365 along with many other leading software products allow you to set up an app on your mobile phone which generates a logon code, or can send you a text message each time you need to logon to the system.
Microsoft have a simple video explaining how it works for Office 365.
When should you use Two Factor Authentication?
We recommend that you enable 2FA for any online account that contains personal, confidential or business related information. This means your Email, Facebook, Sales Force, Office 365 and other online services. At Ace IT Solutions we have 2FA enabled on all our cloud services as we need to protect the data and privacy of both our data and that of our clients.
Two Factor Authentication products can also be added to almost all traditional Microsoft services that you run locally as well. This means that you can add an extra layer of security to your onsite Exchange and Remote Desktop servers.
This simple step will help protect you from serious financial, reputational and data loss.
If you need further advice on enabling Two Factor Authentication in your business please get in touch.