Two Factor Authentication(2fa) is actually a lot more common than people think. But what is it? Also known as multi factor authentication, 2FA a two step process used to verify yourself in two ways. The most common example of 2fa comes from the banking world.
If you conduct online banking you’ll already be guessing at what I mean. A lot of banks now are sending physical tokens to users of their online banking services, such as HSBC with their fobs or Barclays with their Pin Sentries. The process is as follows, you would visit the bank’s website and enter a username and password, you would then enter another password into your fob or pin sentry, this then generates a unique code that you enter into the site, verifying yourself twice.
The reason this is more secure is because even if the thief takes your bank card and knows your log in details, they won’t be able to generate the code needed to log in. It’s like using two passwords and in this case it just happens that to generate a password you need to know another pin, but internet banking needs to be more secure and complex as there’s more at stake than an email account.
So if you ever have the change to enable Two Factor Authentication, do it.
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