While support for security keys is increasing, don't be surprised if they're not accepted at every site you try. To use a security key, you first have to enroll it with each site or service you want to protect. While they can take many forms, most security keys are small, key-sized devices that uniquely identify themselves to sites and services. When Google required employees to use hardware MFA keys, account takeovers effectively vanished. Finally, something you are is a physical characteristic that can be read with a biometric scan, such as a fingerprint or your face, although using the latter ranks among the worst mistakes in technology.īecause it's extremely unlikely an attacker will have more than one of these forms of authentication, MFA makes it much harder for bad guys to take over accounts. It's something not easy for a stranger to access or obtain. Something you have could be a security key such as we are rounding up here, or it might be an authenticator app on your phone. It lives in your head and is ideally known only to you. Something you know is typically a password.
That doesn't mean a second password, but at least any two from a list of three possible factors: Multi-factor authentication, sometimes called two-factor authentication or 2FA, seeks to change that by using more than one authentication factor.
For another, people tend to reuse passwords, meaning that if one account is compromised, all the other accounts with the same password are also at risk. For one thing, we're bad at remembering them and even worse at picking unique, complex passwords that can stand up to attacks. The authentication method most of us are familiar with is being required to enter a username and password.
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