How Does Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) Protect Your Digital Footprint?

It goes without saying that cyber threats have over the years become more sophisticated and this makes securing methods for protecting digital information all the more important. Traditional passwords are no longer good enough to protect your digital information due to their vulnerability to hacking and theft. Thus, far more advanced authentication methods have become more relevant to enhance security. This is where Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) comes into play.

What is Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)?

To know what 2FA is and how it works, we at first will have to disintegrate the term ‘2FA’. An authentication factor helps you to have an access and send or request data from a secured application, system or a network. A password is a classic instance of an authentication factor. However, the password alone is unable to safeguard your data from the potential security threats. That’s the reason, a secondary authentication factor needs to chip to act as another vector that secures the login mechanism.

How Does 2FA Work?

Here are the ways in which 2FA works:

  • The user at first visits the application, network, system or website to be accessed
  • The user is then prompted to enter the username along with the password. (The password is often deciphered by the adversaries due to experience of previous attacks, attacks by brute force, reusing of passwords or other human errors).
  • The system in question them prompts the user to put in a secondary verification input (this can be an SMS-based OTP, facial, fingerprint recognition, authenticator app verification)

Internet banking accounts are perfect daily life examples of 2FA, wherein you need to enter your username, password and then input your unique confidential OTP that you receive through your app or an email notification on your registered email address. Therefore you see, this particular mechanism goes a long way to save your personal data from unauthorised access.