Lock down your login

Lock down your login

Two factor all the things

It’s important two protect your online service accounts, perhaps even more so than your own home. Your online accounts can be accessed and potentially ‘attacked’ by millions of people from all around the world, 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Unlike your home, they don’t even need to leave the comfort of their ?basement? before ‘having a go’ at breaking into your account.

First things first; you should always use a strong password when setting up accounts online, and never reuse passwords on more than one website. I personally recommend (and use daily) LastPass which can be easily integrated into your daily workflow, using either it’s desktop/mobile app or its web browser plugins.

However, databases are breached and passwords are stolen. These things happen! So it’s best to also secure all of your online accounts using multifactor (also known as two factor, two-step and multistep) authentication. This acts as a second method to double check it is infact the owner of the account who is trying to access the service. This may sound complicated… However…

It’s not as complicated as it may first seem

As multifactor authentication has now become almost the norm for online services, the guys over at Turn On 2FA have made it super simple to search for, and follow instructions on how to enable multifactor authentication on all the sites and services that currently support it.

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month

As part of NCSAM the subject of locking down your login, will be one of many covered on social media under the hashtag ChatSTC – for more information check out Twitter Chat: Make Your Home a Haven for Online Safety

Mike Hudson

Mike Hudson is a Lead Cyber Security Analyst living and working in Kingston Upon Hull. With extensive experience in Microsoft and Apple technologies, ranging from desktop OS’s to Server OS’s and hardware. By day working as part of an infrastructure team, and by night ridding the world of IT issues through blog posts..

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