Security is one of, if not the most, important thing in the
technological world. We live in a technological age where everything has digital
security now such as phones, houses, and cars. Digital security for
non-software related objects are generally used for convenience such as not
having to carry around keys. The problem with digital security is passwords. Studies
have shown that people generally use the same password for everything and will
tend to not make them complicated for fear of not remembering the password. A
saving grace is the technology called “two-way authentication” or two-factor
authentication.
To put it simply two-way authentication is a second layer of
security that uses a separate device than the device you are trying to access.
For example many banks use two-way authentication requiring you to not only log
on normally with a password but also a randomized pin key that they send to a
phone. This makes it much harder to hack into an account because it requires
someone to have a physical registered device as well as the account information.
There are a few ways that two-way authentication works. One
of the ways is quite simple yet effective. You use a physical device such as a
digital key-chain or a smartphone with a specific application. The physical
device or dongle will be set up to your account and you will enter a given id
key. Using an algorithm based on the account and id key, the dongle will
produce a pin number that you apply to the account whenever you access it. The
pin number is also time limited. What this means is that for someone to hack
into your two-way authenticated account, they would need your account
information and either the dongle or your id key and the secret algorithm that
makes this work, which I’m sure is different for every company.
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| A dongle showing a pin number. |
If you want a secure digital life, either come up with a
randomized extra secure password for every account you will ever have, or use
two-way authentication which is available in the many popular sites such as:
Amazon, eBay, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, LinkedIn, most banks, and many more.
Hello! I am so glad you talked about two-way authentication because I use it on a daily basis. I've been playing the online game Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and purchased a dongle to prevent myself from being hacked. I'm very interested in the algorithm that the dongle uses and would like if you expanded on your post by talking about the algorithm. It's fascinating that the given randomized number from the dongle provides access to your account. With this method, I think that it's HIGHLY unlikely that you would ever be hacked. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteGood post. It is true security is a huge issue. I was not aware of this type of approach but it makes a ton of sense. By adding another layer of security it really helps to keep ones information encrypted.
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