How to Protect Accounts By Enabling Two-Step Authentication

World Password Day is celebrated on the first Thursday of May, a security method that complements passwords and adds an extra layer of security to your Internet service user accounts.

Passwords are the primary mechanism offered by the different services to access their systems as users; to register, access our personal space, and make use of the services they offer us, we need a username, which is generally the email, and a key or password. It would be an easy process if it weren’t for the fact that, in many cases, we don’t make sure that our passwords meet minimum security requirements:

1. They are composed of at least eight characters containing uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters.
2. Different for each service we use.
3. Those are not words from the dictionary, regardless of the language.
4. They are not made up of dates, names, or any other easily guessable personal information, nor are they made up of consecutive characters on the keyboard, such as ‘12345678’ or ‘asdfghjkl.’

In addition, sometimes it happens that, despite our passwords being robust, the services of which we are users can be attacked and suffer security breaches, so that said information can be exposed and filtered in different Internet forums, ending up in the hands of anyone.

To prevent anyone from accessing our accounts, regardless of whether the password is strong or not, or because it has ended up in the hands of anyone for different reasons, we can configure and activate two-step authentication or double verification in our accounts. 

In this way, whenever we log into our accounts, an additional step will be necessary, and even if cybercriminals have our passwords, they will not be able to access them since they will not have access to the verification code, thus protecting us from attacks, such as phishing or account theft through information leaks.

Do you want to know more about how this security mechanism protects accounts? Take a look at the following infographic. We encourage you to activate it in your accounts when you finish watching it. The sooner you set it up, the more protected you will be.