Passwords are just far too easy to share, steal or guess. For the average person, you will find you are challenged for passwords in more than 20 different systems in your business and personal life. However, statistics show that chances are, you have far less unique passwords. In fact, most people have less than four!!
That is why identity assurance is vital to computer security. The most common method of identity assurance is two-factor authentication.
What is two-factor authentication?
The best example is to think about withdrawing money from a bank ATM machine for a moment. How does that work? You need your bank card plus a PIN code.
Your bank requires your card to be placed into the ATM machine, and that you enter in your matching PIN code on the pin pad. It doesn’t allow you to do a lot of guessing before locking out your account access. Based on the combination of you HAVING the card, and KNOWING the PIN, you can withdraw money from virtually any bank ATM machine in the world that can communicate with your financial institution. This is exactly how “two-factor” authentication works: you need to have a unique physical key plus know a private PIN code.
Hardware or software tokens are provided that generate one time use passcodes every 60 seconds and when combined with a personal pin becomes a secure way to prove identity. The industry standard is RSA (www.rsa.com). RSA provides hardware or software tokens plus their industry standard software to works on all major platforms. The software token is installed on a persons cell phone to generate the 1 time use passcodes.
Link High recommends RSA for our larger clients and AuthAnvil to our smaller clients.
