5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs Multi-Factor Authentication

 These days everyone understands the need to use a good password for security.  You set passwords to protect yourself from any cyber-attacks. It makes you feel secure, knowing that your data and files can not be accessed by anyone other than you. 

Any application, social media or email account, now requires a password like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, etc. You may also have noticed that a higher level of security is also offered, multi-factor authentication (MFA), for more protection.

This is not just an issue for personal accounts, businesses should also have multi-factor authentication enabled for their business accounts. The files and data owned by your business are extremely important, and cyberattacks can have huge impacts if you don’t protect them. 

Let’s dig deeper into why you should use multi-factor authentication for your business.

What is Multi-Factor Authentication? 

Simply put, multi-factor authentication is another level of security added to your password or login accounts. It requires you to put one or more secondary passwords to heighten your security. It can be a code sent to a respective phone or email, additional information like a security question, or an identification badge you need to provide to get access.

Multi-factor authentication is highly recommended for businesses. It can ultimately avoid breach attacks by cybercriminals which can cause harm to your files and other data. Cybercriminals who try to attack your system have to figure out your multiple defenses for a successful data intervention, and this is much harder if you use MFA.

5 Reasons To Set Up Multi-Factor Authentication

1. It strengthens your cyber security

Multi-Factor Authentication means that you have several layers of defense against cyber attacks. Because multiple set-up passwords and information add numerous security barriers, it means your business has an improved cybersecurity framework. 

Many businesses suffer from cyber attacks like hacked data, stolen files, and malware attacks. These are primarily because of poor cybersecurity. With multi-factor authentication, you are able to have an additional line of defense against cyber crimes.

2. It protects your business’ reputation 

Your business reputation matters. A poor reputation results in a lack of customer trust and will limit your growth as an organisation. Regardless of whether you have a small business, medium-sized enterprise, or a large well-established company, multi-factor authentication for all employees is highly recommended. 

A data breach not only affects you but your customers as well as it may be their data that is stolen.  Customers are likely to move away from you if criminals hack their information due to your poor cybersecurity.  

3. It keeps your important files and data protected

Your files and data are extremely important for your business data analytics, . These are the things that contain all the information and records about your business from its performance, operation, and employees’ information, to customers’ data. A weak, unprotected record file is susceptible to cyber-attacks. 

Some of the worst things that can happen to your business data are tampering, deleting, and stealing your records. Even losing public data (like your website content) can cause big problems and cost you a lot of time and money to reinstate. Setting up multi-factor authentication on your passwords can help you prevent from experiencing this type of issue and carry on with business as usual.

4. Your employees have a better experience 

Think of how your employees could be impacted by a cyber attack. Their work would be disrupted and they would have to go into fire-fighting mode, so, a secure login process helps them too. They can log in and out of their accounts without worrying about their files and data being stolen or be used for illegal actions. Explaining to them why your organization uses multi-factor authentication will help them feel safe and secure.

5. It prevents money lost and huge expenses 

It costs a lot of money to recover from cyber-attacks, and a damaged reputation can not be easily fixed  by spending money. With better security, like multi-factor authentication, you can save money and time by avoiding these costs. 

Don’t forget that loss of reputation due to data breaches is also a financial cost as they are likely to lose you customers as well as incurring costs in rectifying the breach.  

Final note

Managing a business isn’t just about management, sales, promotion, and other day-to-day operations. Keeping an eye on security to protect your work and your customer’s data is essential. Setting up multi-factor authentication for all your system accounts is a great way to strengthen your cyber security. 

Good cyber security is crucial today as every business is now digital to some extent. Neglecting your account passwords has the potential to ruin your operations. By simply adding multiple passwords and defenses against cyberattacks can make your business grow and continue to strive. 

Luckily, it’s not hard to do. As mentioned at the start of this article, many tools already have MFA built-in (such as Google Apps), and good password management tools, such as LastPass, make it easy to ensure that employees don’t reuse the same passwords for all their accounts.

At SystemSeed we take client security very seriously and sat on the Drupal Security Committee for many years. We always create secure roles and permissions set up for all our client projects and ensure that the intended individuals have access at the right levels.