The question is not whether you should have multifactor authentication (MFA); instead, what type? MFA is utterly essential when it comes to your business and personal data security. In the world of multifactor authentication, not all avenues are created equal. Although having something is better than nothing, in this case, that is not the attitude that you should have concerning your security. In 2016, NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) proposed restricting the use of SMS or voice for MFA, and although they softened their approach, they still do not recommend this method of MFA. Microsoft recently began campaigning against using SMS or voice for MFA. Today we are going to look at why the big push and what avenue is best for MFA.

In regards to Multifactor Authentication, the question should not be if but instead what kind. Multifactor authentication (MFA) is vital to the security of your network. As Brian Sherman from Valeo was quoted, “Weaker MFA is better than no MFA.” However, if you can protect your data more thoroughly, then why wouldn’t you? Let’s take a look at the forms of MFA and how they will help keep your data safe.

“If you don’t know where you’ve come from. You don’t know where you’re going.” This quote by Maya Angelou was not explicitly quoted regarding technology, although the relevancy is powerful. Technology progresses exponentially, and so to understand how far we have come, we need to understand where we began. This week, in 1956, the very first commercial hard drive was released. It was the IBM 350 Disk Storage Unit Model 1, and it was the size of two refrigerators. This ground-breaking technology weighed around a ton and could store about 4-5 megabytes of data. Today, a device the size of an old compact disk case can hold over 10 Terabytes of data. That is over 1,000,000 times the storage of the originally released hard drive. Although hard drives aren’t as vital as they used to be now that we have cloud storage, it is an essential piece of history to learn where we came from and where we are today.

The Global pandemic of which we are living has changed the world in so many ways. It has altered the way we work, the way our children learn, and most everything we do in our day-to-day lives. One thing it hasn't put a damper on is innovation. We are continuing to see incredible technology pop-up everywhere. Some of the innovations are in response to the current world we live in, and others are brand new, entirely out of the box thinking that is popping up in new devices, software, and applications. Today we are looking at a few of the new devices that are blowing our minds.

As most of us know, cyber threats are on the rise due to the many uncertainties in our world. To combat the imminent risk, last week, we began our three-part Cybersecurity Readiness series. Part one of the series covered the necessary groundwork for a successful cybersecurity readiness plan. Without a multi-dimensional plan, the flaws and holes will be prevalent in your security. With the right foundation in place, we can move on to part two, which includes the steps we need to take daily to sustain a robust security strategy.

Part-two of our cybersecurity readiness series includes the daily steps needed to help prevent a malicious cyberattack.

We have spent a significant portion of this year breaking down the differences between Office 365 and Microsoft 365. The similar names are confusing, and it is challenging to decipher the differences between the applications. Thankfully, Microsoft was aware of the confusion and is gearing up for a grand rebrand on April 21st. Now, these products will have the same encompassing Microsoft 365 umbrella. The hope is that this rebrand will ease the confusion and simplify the choice of which application is right for you. Active with this rebrand are not just name changes, but additional tools. These tools will be brought to you by Microsoft’s smart and intuitive Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Congratulations to everyone out there. You have most likely been working remotely for three weeks and hopefully settling into a new “normal” workday. Part of that new “normal” workday for most of us has been a plethora of video conferences. We have made a drastic change from audio-only conference calls to now getting to regularly see what people wear when they work from home. Also with this change, we are finding out that these applications may not have been as secure as we expected. While Zoom works on these issues fervently, here are a few tips to keep your meetings safer.