Greg's Corner

Are your online accounts secure enough?

What are your most important online accounts? Probably your bank, your email and your social network of choice in that order. Now you may have those accounts protected with a strong password, but is that enough? You may have a password that contains alphanumeric characters both upper and lowercase among non-alphanumeric characters and that is 12 characters long. That’s all well and good but it’s not perfect. Having your accounts protected by a strong password is only one layer of protection but it is also one level of failure.

Most online services today offer a feature that’s known as two factor authentication. When you activate two factor authentication your username and password is only one step to logging into your account. The second part to the authentication, in most cases, is that the service you’re trying to access sends you a personal one-time code, usually through a text message. That means that if you activate two factor authentication, if someone were to ascertain your username and password they still wouldn’t be able to access your account without having your cell phone.

While two factor authentication isn’t perfect it can go a long way in keeping your online life secure.