Two Factor Authentication

Authentication is the cornerstone of any vigilant network security solution. The traditional authentication method and still the most popular used to protect the vast majority of networks is the user name and password. Many people don’t realise that this is a 50 year-old solution designed when there were no networks, no Internet… in fact, next to no computers! Passwords suffer from a number of weaknesses that make them an ineffective security measure for your network - they are easy to steal, easy to hack and hard to remember. The result is both reduced network security and increased help-desk costs for resetting passwords.

Two-Factor Authentication is directly analogous to the way we ‘authenticate’ to a cash machine – you use something only you have (your unique bank card) and something only you know (your secret PIN). To identify yourself to the system you need both things, this is known as two factor authentication. It is very similar in the networked world; the ‘something only you have’ is a password-generating authenticator or token. The ‘something only you know’ is, again, a secret PIN. Your token is your key to the network – it generates a new password every time you logon. Your PIN validates that you are the rightful owner of the token. You can choose from several varieties of tokens all of which do the same thing, they generate a new secure, random ‘One-Time Password’ for every logon.

Anyone key-logging or shoulder surfing will have a worthless string of letters and numbers as each password will work once and only once. Next logon a new random, One-Time Password is generated. This secure method of authentication does what static passwords cannot, it gives you the confidence and peace-of-mind that a user logging on to the network, really is who he or she claims to be and not someone just using a stolen, lost or shared password.