By Kappa Category security
Tags 2fa authentication
Estimated Read Time: 4 min read
Ninja Level:
2FA or two factor authentication is a mechanism of using another means of user authentication besides solely rely on password. 2FA or MFA (multiple factor authentication) would greatly increase the security. These are the common 2FA deployed in many internet web sites:
- One time password send over E-mail or SMS
- TOTP (Time-based One-Time Password algorithm)
- U2F (Universal 2nd Factor)
- WebAuthn (FIDO2 Web Authentication)
Now, most popular social media web sites and e-commerce sites had already supported at least one or multiple 2FA methods. Examples of web sites with 2FA enabled: Twitter, Reddit, WordPress, Gmail, Amazon and etc.
However, when we look at some of the tech giants, many of them do not provide 2FA for user login (as of the time of writing this article, March 2020). Let's look at some examples.
Tech giants that do not have 2FA support for the user login: IBM id, Dell, EMC, HP Inc. and etc. To my surprise, Cisco is 2FA ready for the user login when I check it in 2019.
How about antivirus companies? Bitdefender and Sophos added 2FA support for their consumer control center or portal in 2020. For TrendMicro, it is not 2FA ready.
Edit: As of 2021-June, IBM, Redhat and TrendMicro has support of TOTP.
Finally, why I would care about the 2FA with the tech giants? It is because there are sensitive information like name, home and billing addresses, telephone numbers, payment information and other information associated with the user accounts. Having 2FA support would have much better security.
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