What is it and why should you care?
Two factor authentication (also called 2FA or multi-factor authentication) is the process of applying additional security to that of a password. A process many banks already implement with the use of a key fob or similar it is basically the combination of something you know (a password) and something you have (a key fob or app on your phone) which generates a constantly changing code. The combination of these makes the job of a hacker trying to gain access to an account virtually impossible.
But I already have a strong p@55w0rd
Modern computing power makes the job of guessing a password much easier that it used to be. Accounts can be ‘brute forced’ (a process whereby a hacker can attempt access by guessing a password at a rate of multiple tries per second in some cases) with relative ease and just swapping a few letters for numbers just doesn’t cut it. Check out our article on good passwords here.
With access to an email account within your organisation, an attacker can put together well crafted messages requesting money to be transferred, account details changed, intellectual property stolen, payments made or other fraudulent activity which may take some time to actually spot.
Good News! Microsoft has you covered
For a couple of years now Microsoft has made 2FA available to Office 365 customers as part of their business subscription. However it is something which has to enabled manually. Westcom customers can contact the helpdesk and get this feature set-up for either a subset of your users or the whole organisation. There is however a handy guide available here which describes the process of setting up multi-factor authentication in Office 365 very well.
Getting multi-factor authentication set-up on your Office 365 is probably the single best thing you can do to help secure communication within your business. Speak with Westcom Networks today to understand how we can help you get this set-up and running with minimal disruption.
