Why Every Company Needs to Use Two Factor Authentication
In the past few years, the most lucrative targets for malicious actors and scammers have been almost exclusively businesses and companies that are apathetic in their internal security implementations.
These lax security implementations allow malicious actors to infiltrate and compromise the systems, networks, and databases of entire companies.
So before delving deeper into how you should protect yourself and your company, you should know the things you are going up against:
- What are Cyber Attacks?
- What are the hacker's main objectives and how do they get in?
- What are the different types of Cyber Attacks that could target you?
- How do you protect your company against these attacks?
- Why Two Factor Authentication (2FA)?
What are Cyber Attacks?
The term cyber-attack refers to any external attack which is initiated from a set of computers to impair the regular functioning of other computers and related networks. That means that if you are a part of a company, then the employees of the company are probably at risk of falling victim to these attacks.
How do the hackers get in?
The easiest way for any malicious actor to compromise an entire system or an individual user is to obtain the admin or user credentials. The attackers usually obtain these credentials through one of three methods.
Using Pre-leaked Passwords
In this case, the attackers will use previously seen passwords from known data breaches. This specific attack vector is known as Credential Stuffing. The attackers use these previously leaked passwords to try to gain access to the account. If successful they are able to directly access any account that uses the same password as the one in the data breach.
Through Brute-Force Attacks
Another attack vector is through the use of brute force techniques. Here the attackers use automated tools and scripts to try every possible combination of a password. Although in some cases time intensive, the ease at which most common passwords can be cracked using this method cannot be understated.
Social Engineering
This is the newest form of attack that we have observed in the wild, but it’s arguably the most dangerous. Here the attackers send out emails or directly call vulnerable victims and convince them into sharing their passwords willingly. Mostly done through Phishing and Vishing.
How do you protect your company against these attacks?
The most effective way to protect your employees or users is through the use of Two Factor Authentication.
Passwords are everywhere, we use them to access anything and everything. At first, we used one password for everything but that wasn’t good enough so we started making our passwords more complicated with a combination of numbers, uppercase/lowercase letters & even special characters.
Many people use password managers to organize dozens or hundreds of unique passwords. But no matter how complex your password or the password management system is, it is still sometimes not enough to prevent account takeover, because all it takes is one simple phishing email or database breach and your password is out in the world. So, if passwords are impossible to protect, how do you protect your account?
What is Two Factor Authentication (2FA)?
Using Two Factor Authentication adds another method of identity verification to secure your accounts.
By combining your username and password with the second method your account becomes extremely secure and almost impossible for an attacker to pass through, even if they have your password.
The main reason why two-factor authentication matters are that a password is no longer strong enough on its own to protect your company’s data. Here are a few statistics as to why:
- 92% of organizations have credentials for sale on the Dark Web
- 61% of people reuse the same or similar password everywhere
- “123456” and “password” were the top two password choices in 2018
- 81% of data breaches have been the result of weak or stolen password
Even if a hacker buys credentials from the dark web, they won’t be able to access 2FA enabled accounts unless they also have the MFA device, whether it’s a phone with an authenticator app or a device like a YubiKey.
Two Factor Authentication Made Easy with miniOrange
Among the secure methods for a user to control sites, password-protected authentication is used widely because it is easily adopted and has high compatibility in a cost-effective manner. miniOrage provides a secure two-factor authentication mechanism plugin for multiple platforms (WordPress, Atlassian, Drupal, Magento & Moodle) which adds an extra layer of security to your company’s databases and website.
When the user enters his/her correct username and password they are prompted with a second-factor authentication page, in order to log in successfully. We offer 15+ authentication methods which include OTP over Email, OTP over SMS, hardware token, QR code authentication, Google authenticator, etc.
Conclusion
In this article, we have given a brief synopsis of the different types of attacks that target SMBs. A solution on how we can protect ourselves from these attacks using 2FA. Two-factor authentication adds an extra step to your basic log-in procedure.
You may be curious about how you or your development team can implement this on your website. check the following resources for more information:
