I have covered the importance of MFA(Multi Factor Authentication) aka 2 factor security with more and more vendors such as Gmail Outlook and others now supporting MFA there is no reason not to have it enabled. MFA is the answer to a lot of security issues when it comes to authentication.
One of the common complaints with MFA is that is not always user friendly and can be hard to setup for the average user. Google has the authenticator app available on the playstore and there are others such as Authy but for some reason still users don’t embrace this security measure. worst of all its totally free !!!.
One vendor that is making this process easier for users and is also streamlining the MFA support for everyone else is YUBIKEY
YUBIKEY uses a physical device that you can put on your keychain that has a button that you press on it. While the others use mobile apps and use the phone as the physical device that is use for the second pieace of authentication remember MFA is something you have (phone/key) and something you know (Password).
Below is a image of the key itself its sleek and fits nicely on a keychain
One of the feature I like is that you can use the key to help generate keys such as PGP keys the official site says that RSA 4096 for OpenPGP is supported ! wow.
The Key is supported on tons of platforms which is always a plus as some of the mobile apps don’t support all platforms.
Things like Facebook,Gmail, and other popular services are supported out of the box also the key works on all operating systems !.
The other thing I like about have a physical key is not having to worry if my phone has died or if I have to restore my phone and not have the app on it however AUTHY has a cool feature where it backups the keys and you can login to get them back.Google authenticator does not have such a feature at the time of this writing.
The YUBIKEy can be used with full disk encryption and there is even integration with password managers such as keepass which is also impressive
The key retails for 18$ for the single protocol key there is also a multiprotocol keys for 40$ which comes in different form factors
they both have the same functionality recently Google has announced they it has added support for an additional layer of Gmail protection which uses the YUBIKEY
If you have a NFC enabled phone you can also use the YUBIKEY to complete authentication for one of the services .
You can buy the YUBIKEY at https://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey-hardware/yubikey4/
With all of the accounts that get hacked on a daily basis it is important to take care to secure your online accounts. whether is YUBIKEY or Google authenticator etc you can protect your account for free or in YUBIKEYS case for a very small amount
I recommend if you don’t have MFA enabled you enable it NOW !
I am not sponsored by YUBIKEY and have not ben paid by them I just like their product