In the modern world with you leaving your digital fingertips everywhere, security has become a major issue lately. A better way to design your systems for security has been suggested by experts. That is the use of an Authentication system so we can have a safer software , appliance or platform to work with. This has been called the two-step to two factor authentication and it helps to keep the account secure, so even if someone has your password and wants to login to your account, they won’t be able to unless you authorize them to do so. This has been a major step up in the computer security industry and nowadays most services offer some form of two-step verification.
Two-step verification is a system that allows users to have an extra level of security, when you login somewhere that has two-step authentication enabled, a message will be sent to the original user. This message can be sent via phone, mobile apps, email or even special devices that are called Authenticators. After that, the user has to either provide the code sent to them in the message to the application or website they are logging in to and then they will gain access to it. But as we become more comfortable with new technology new ways emerge to use the previous models. Now you can verify your google account by just answering a prompt on your phone.
You may have the option to use two-factor authentication for platforms and applications that you use most frequently, but in a work environment with sensitive data, you will need a way to secure the client itself. With the advance of virtual machines and also thin clients, the demand to connect to a virtual or remote desktop has increased in small office and also enterprise settings. Securing these clients has become a challenge with the late ransomware trends and the lurking of information robbers and hackers. That’s a major case for PC clients running on windows. Nowadays you can use active directory to manage the windows clients but, Microsoft doesn’t offer two-step verification on some legacy clients and computers with incompatible licenses. This issue can be solved by installing a software that provides this feature. Sunfirewall provides two methods of two-step authentication amongst many more features that have been discussed elsewhere.
The admin activates the OTP generation system for a client or all the clients that have Sunfirewall installed on them. This will disable the client’s default password and activate a one time password.
The client that wants to login will have to provide the one time generated password if they want to login to their system. This one time password will be shown to the admins so they can provide it to the users whenever there is a request.
The user after receiving the one time password either via their IT staff or an automated email, can see the new password and login to their client. This password will be active as long as the client is logged on or it can have a time limit.
