What is Two Factor Authentication(2-FA) and its Benefits?

by Josh Biggs in Tech on 5th November 2019

As a business owner, you have so much information stored on your devices. It is important to protect your devices from cyberattacks or threats. You must keep your business information safe, companies are implementing many strategies to improve the security of the information. Safeguarding the information is vital for building a relationship with your customers. If you’re not successful in keeping the information safe, it will become hard for your customers to trust you. 

The more your organisation grows, the more important the security becomes. Earlier a password would guard all your private information, but in the current scenario, it is difficult to protect your information with a single password. Technological advancements have not only helped the business in keeping their information safe. It has also lent a helping hand for hackers to become more powerful. It just takes them a few minutes to crack your password.

So one single password cannot save your data from hackers, you need something more such as two-factor authentication. If you want to keep your data then you must implement it.

What is two-factor authentication?

The IT department of every business is continuously struggling to protect the information relating to their business from unauthorized sources. The Two Factor Authentication is one of the best ways to secure your data. It is a process where users give two distinct authentication factors to verify themselves. This way they can effectively protect both the resources and their credentials.

It offers a higher level of assurance and security compared to single-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication takes a password as the first factor and fingerprint or facial scan as a secondary factor.

Here are the few benefits that two-factor authentication offers.

Security

Passwords have lost their glory because it has become highly easy to crack a password. If you’re only securing your data with only a password then you’re naive. People are not so good at selecting their passwords. The most proportion of them select weak passwords such as “Password” “12345” or sometimes the names and birthdays of them are their loved ones. 

Another most commonly seen passwords are mobile numbers. If you’re setting a password make sure you set a strong password if you’re not then there is no point of using a password. You can get rid of passwords altogether. Using two-factor authentication will enhance security and keep your data safe. It requires two ways to identify a user i.e., Password and OTP. You can be sure that your data is safe from any unauthorised sources.

Reduces costs

Wondering how two-factor authentication can reduce costs to your business? Help-desk is a one-stop destination for the user to solutions to their problems. Be it a small company or large, they would have a help desk to deal with customer queries. If you neglect customer companies for too long there are high chances of you losing a customer. These help desks have centralized information and they manage both internal and external queries. 

Did you know that password problem is one of the most common reasons why a customer contacts customer care? If you switch to two-factor authentication, your customers can retrieve their data without help from your personal. This will reduce the burden on your employees and in the long run, it would reduce costs for your business too.

Productivity

Most businesses don’t allow their employees to use their personal devices due to security concerns. Using personal devices can improve the productivity of an employee. The IT departments are using mobility to improve the productivity and flexibility within the organisation. 

If you implement 2FA in your workspace, your employees can access documents, data, back-up systems, etc from any location without worrying about exposing the data to the danger. This not only improves productivity, but it also improves customer satisfaction and helps you in gaining competitive advantage. 

Protection

Data theft and scams are increasing alarmingly. Businesses are highly concerned about their data. These cybercriminals not only steal your data sometimes they destroy the data, change the programs, use malicious codes and transmit propaganda using serves. Over these past few years, password thefts are highly increasing as hackers are using methods such as phishing, keylogging and pharming. 

Along with anti-virus systems and firewalls, your business needs 2FA to hold the fort in case of a cyber attack. You not only have documents in your important data, but you also have financial information about your organisation and clients. When customers are sharing their personal information with your organisation it becomes your responsibility to protect it. 

Conclusion

Multi-factor authentication such as 2FA allows the organisations to guard their data effectively. It reduces the complexity and ensures access and boost flexibility to remote working employees. Hackers have become highly intelligent as they are slowly creeping into most secured networks also. So it becomes companies responsibility to increase their security. Is your company implementing 2FA to protect your data? If no, then it is high time you start implementing it.

Categories: Tech