Cybercriminals try to break into our accounts and carry out various types of attacks with the aim of making a profit and stealing our data. One of the procedures they can use is a Phishing attack to steal our credentials. If we want to add extra security to our accounts and protect them, we can provide them with a second line of defense. Thus, in the event that they obtain our password, they will not be able to access our account because they lack a second verification step. In this article we will see that multi-factor authentication is the best way to secure accounts and data.
Why do you need to enable multi-factor authentication?
The moment we enable multi-factor authentication or MFA we are going to get that second defense barrier. Thus, if someone finds out our password, either through a brute force attack, leak, or randomly, they will not be able to enter the account because they will be missing a second verification step.
Normally, that second step will be to enter a code that an application generates or that we receive in an SMS. Also on some platforms it is allowed to link that second step to a device. As for an application with multifactor authentication that we can use to protect our accounts, it is Google Authenticator.
MFA, the best way to secure accounts
A recently published report unveiled a set of best practices for keeping data private from criminals using multi-factor authentication, or MFA. This way of working remains one of the best defenses for mitigating password risk and preventing cybercriminals from exploiting user credentials.
On the other hand, a very important aspect is that users often share their passwords with others to share services. Furthermore, most also use the same login credentials for more than one account. This is worrying data because both practices can seriously compromise the security of accounts and data.
Bad password practices are still very prevalent, with compromised credentials being one of the leading causes of data breaches. Additionally, cybercriminals have tools to crack complex passwords in seconds, making using MFA very important to validate user identities. On the other hand, he commented that this extra layer of security can protect us from Phishing campaigns, brute force attacks, keyloggers, credential theft malware incidents and many other types of sophisticated cyber intrusions.
You may be interested in knowing how to protect your accounts with double factor verification and Microsoft Authenticator. It is an alternative app to Google Authenticator that we discussed earlier.
The current landscape of multi-factor authentication
The COVID pandemic and the transition to the digital world have greatly changed the way we work. As a consequence of both factors, remote work and the use of cloud services have increased. Thus, it is necessary to reduce the surface of cyber attacks by conveniently protecting our accounts with multi-factor authentication.
One of the dangers that most threaten our accounts is Phishing attacks that increased by 11% according to the Verizon report on data breach investigations of 2021. On the other hand, it was revealed that the costs of data breaches have been the highest in the last 17 years and that an attack usually costs companies 4 million euros.
Furthermore, cybercriminals are developing increasingly sophisticated social engineering schemes to bypass security protocols and tools. This makes it even more difficult for the average user to identify and defend against increasingly complex threats to detect.
Finally, for this reason, RedesZone recommends enabling multifactor authentication in our accounts, especially in the most important ones.
