Passwords are an important part of ensuring your IT infrastructure remains safe, but they are far from the most effective security solution. It’s not necessarily the fault of the password, either; it’s just that hackers and scammers have gotten a lot better at cracking passwords in recent years, even reasonably complex ones. We recommend you implement multi-factor authentication as a secondary precaution against breaches—and here’s why.
When securing your infrastructure, MFA is not something you should gloss over.
The biggest reason to consider MFA is that it makes a second layer of credentials necessary for account access. Through MFA, you basically make any hacker’s job twice as difficult, if not outright impossible. This is because not only does the hacker have to have your account credentials, but they often require a secondary code or physical access to a device in your possession, essentially halting any efforts at remote exploitation.
MFA remains one of the most practical and effective methods for protecting your organization’s infrastructure from threats.
There are several different types of multi-factor authentication out there that take advantage of the various methods of authentication. Here are just a couple examples:
When two or even three of the above are present, you get multi-factor authentication.
Curious what this looks like in practice? Here are some common types of MFA you might see in the wild:
Suffice it to say that there’s plenty of room to implement MFA for just about any business, and if your company deals with sensitive data, you should take appropriate measures to ensure it’s safely behind multiple layers of defenses.
First Column IT can guide your business in its implementation of MFA tools and data security. Learn more by calling us today at (571) 470-5594.
