If you’re like me you’ve probably gotten an email or Facebook comment with a subject like “OMG! I can’t believe he did that! http://crazyvdiueo.co.ul.tz” from a good friend or co-worker. Most people quickly realize that their friend’s account has been compromised. There’s no doubt the victim then gets a message from several people stating “Your Facebook account has been hacked.”
I’ll admit this sort of thing scares me. Not only can it be embarrassing depending on the ‘nature’ of the message sent but I start to question what else these hackers did with all the information in those accounts.
I recently enabled Google’s 2-Step Verification on my account. I have to say I certainly feel a lot better after setting it up. In my line of work, I am in a constant battle with security versus convenience. It’s been said that if you really want to protect your computer, then unplug it from the Internet. In our cloudified world, we need to take reasonable steps to keep our data secure. By the way, 2-Step verification, or two-factor authentication, is not a new concept. It’s been in the enterprise for quite some time and you might have run into it at some point.
How does this whole thing work? Let’s start with the Google Account.