Question

The Question: If you take a look at the syllabus, one of the goals of the course is basically to make you knowledgeable about how to defend your own computers, online privacy, etc. This is especially true for emerging issues. That is, things that might come up in the future what we didn’t cover in the course. So, in that spirit this question takes a topic that we have not covered, and asks you to look into it and answer some questions.

An important topic in personal cybersecurity and related topics is multiple factor authentication (a popular version of this is two factor authentication). Please answer the following questions, in your own words.

a.) Describe in a short paragraph what multiple factor authentication is.

b.) From the point of view of your own personal cybersecurity, what is the importance of multiple factor authentication?

Answer 1

a)    In today's world only providing single layered authentication to access the data is not sufficient.As there is tremendously increment in technologies to access the data so cybersecurity also a day by day crucial thing for everyone.Authentication could be happened with

    1)User Knows something e.g.Username and password

    2) User will have something e.g ATM cards,credit Cards

    3) User itself is something e.g. biomatric authentication

So that Multi Factor authentication came into the focus which provides multilayered authentication to access the data because only with username and password,authentication will not be secured.In MFA user has to gone through different ways of authentication like first login with as usual two credentials such as Username and Password or Swipe the cards,enters the pin,then the system will send an OTP to registered email or phone number.If user enters correct OTP then system will redirect the request to expected data.In spite of unauthorized user breaks security of single layered authentication but there will be another layer of authentication to reach to the actual data.Such MFA highly used by Banking Systems,Reservation Systems,Data Storage Systems.

b) Ans.

1) Very first importance of MFA is to tighten the security to protect the data from Unauthorized user.

2) Someone could thought like performing authentication multiple times is really an irritating task but the kind of security has been provided by MFA is the key factor in cybersecurity.

3) From interesting point of view MFA allows user to learn and use different ways of authentications which is actually good.

4) MFA is not bounded to particular device,user can logged into the system through personal desktop,mobile phones anywhere,anytime in the world.

5) MFA also works secrety like hidden CCTV cameras.When user would trying to authenticate into system using personal desktop or phones ,MFA scans mouse movement,fingerprints.