Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) for Hosted Desktops

Passwords are increasingly being considered as much less secure than people once thought they were. People using easy to remember passwords, using the same password for multiple systems, or writing down passwords that are hard to remember, means there is an increasing risk of hackers discovering your password.   Multi Factor Authentication provides an extra layer of security for your hosted remote desktop. Watch this video to find out more

Video Transcription

We’ve all been brought up to use passwords to connect to our computers, websites, social accounts and online banking. There are so many passwords to remember, many of us fall into the trap of using the same password for everything, but of course that’s really bad as if a shopping website gets hacked and you use the same password for that as your email account, then the hacker could potentially log on to your email and start requesting password resets for all your other accounts. And even if we use different and complex passwords, there’s still a risk for phishing sites, keystroke-logging software. or somebody reading the post-it note you stuck on your laptop bag, there’s always someone that can find out your password. Of course, it’s bad enough with your own personal data systems, but what about our work information? What about our business systems? Our financial information about customers? Or healthcare systems that have sensitive personal data about patients? How do we reduce the risk of hackers getting access to this information?

The answer to that is a thing called two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication uses a combination as something you know and something you have in order to grant you access to your systems. Using two-factor authentication makes it much harder for hackers, as they would have to know your username your password and to have stolen your mobile phone AND be able to unlock your mobile phone in order to gain access. You might not be aware if someone has discovered your password but I bet you’d know pretty quick if your mobile phone went missing.

At Your Office Anywhere, we’ve teamed up with one of the world’s leading security providers to offer two-factor authentication to our hosted desktop customers. So, let’s see how it works. When you connect to a remote desktop – and in this example we’re using an RDP file – the first thing it asks you is for is your password, so this is your first authentication factor and you may even have this password saved on your PC or laptop. Then, as it logs into the remote desktop, it sends a push notification to your mobile phone app. My phone was already unlocked in this example, so I’ll simply open the app notification and click approve and bang, it immediately lets me in, very quick and with very little effort for the users. If users don’t have smart phones, it can be configured to call them or send a text message. We even use a separate hardware token that has a unique passcode that changes very frequently that user can enter. Once inside, the user can work away just as normal before logging out at the end of the day or disconnecting the session.

There’s a wide variety of authentication methods that can be used to make it easy for every user to securely log in, and customers have the option of the self-service management to provide end-users with the ability to easily manage their own devices during login, without having to go to a separate portal or contact a help desk when they get a new mobile phone for example. I hope that’s been helpful but if you’d like to find out more, please go to our website at YourOfficeAnywhere.co.uk, or give one of our technical sales consultants a ring on 01282 500318, or simply email us at sales@yourofficeanywhere.co.uk. Thank you very much