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The Future of 2FA

road-forwardTwo-Factor Authentication became mainstream in the past year. People finally realized that passwords alone are not enough and demanded something better. Services responded: Google, Dropbox, Twitter, Linked-in and the majority of big cloud service providers now offer two-factor Authentication as an optional security feature.

But adoption is still low.

The majority of people haven’t yet adopted two-factor Authentication because of the hassle of doing so. The biggest improvement this industry has seen since 1996 has been moving from hardware dongles to SMS and smartphone apps, but kept all of the deficiencies. Today, in 2013, two-factor Authentication apps do little more than what Hardware dongles do.

We’ve tried to improve upon this: we added an instant key rotation mechanisms in case master keys were compromised. We made it possible to automatically backup and sync your accounts in case you ever lost your phone. And many other small things like time synchronization and health check that make the experience a bit better.

But given the power and connectivity, your smartphone has today, two-Factor Auth should be better. What if we could make two-factor Authentication completely transparent to you? That you could enjoy better security without any extra effort?

We believe that the future of Two-Factor Auth is one where our devices will do the work for us in order to provide us a greater and simpler security. Using proximity, location, gestures and other qualities, these smart devices will allow us to seamlessly authenticate without any effort on our part.

Today, we want to show an example of that.

We’re launching a Bluetooth App that works along with your smartphone to help you use two-factor Authentication seamlessly as long as your cellphone is nearby. This is not the end-all and be-all for two-factor Authentication. There’s still a long way to go, but we hope it at least shows that you deserve better.

We can’t wait to show you the rest. Join us!

About the author Authy

Authy is simple & secure two-factor authentication, available as a free mobile or desktop app, from Twilio. To get yours, click on the download button at the top of the page.

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