Double Down On Your Security With Two-Factor Authentication
If you’ve never been hacked, consider yourself lucky. A May 2014 Ponemon Institute study found that 47% of U.S. adults have had personal data exposed over a 12-month period. The report points to a number of high-profile breaches that potentially provided cybercriminals with information to steal login credentials and/or credit/debit card information, including up to 110 million Target customers, 38 million active Adobe users’ usernames and passwords, “a significant number” of the 120 million AOL accounts, and possibly all of eBay’s 148 million users.
Of course, power users have already protected their accounts with long, random, nearly impossible to remember passwords.(Right?) But even ironclad passwords may not be enough as hackers accumulate usernames and passwords stolen from online databases. A recent report by Hold Security found that a Russian cybercrime gang was in possession of a staggering 1.2 billion unique username/password combinations.