Additional Information
- Google Authenticator App for iOS
- Google Authenticator App for Android
- Duo Security for advanced Two-Factor authentication
Video Transcript
LuxSci has just released a new Two-Factor authentication method: Google Authenticator. This video is going to show you how to get it going.
Once you log into LuxSci, go into your security settings. There, you will find Two-Factor authentication. If it is not on, turn it on. Here you see the various options that we have.
Other Two-Facto Options
One, SMS, just sends you a token to your cellphone via text message. This is easy and quick, but these days we all know that text messaging is not very secure.
Email: you could have that same token sent to an alternate email address of yours. That works, and it is only as safe as that alternate email address.
We've also for a long time supported duo.com, Duo Security, which is a fabulous service that requires some integration to get it going. It allows phone calls, phone apps, and all kinds of ways of configuring authentication that is particularly good, if you are a company and want to have an administrator manager by its identities.
Google Authenticator
The new option is Google Authenticator. Click this to turn it on. You want to next install the Google Authenticator app on your phone, if you haven't done it already. You can also use any other app rather than the Google one, that supports good authenticator. There are many out there.
Open up the app, select set up new account, and use your phone to scan this QR code. This will automatically configure the account on your phone, nothing else to do.
Manual Setup and Reset
In the rare case where scanning the QR code doesn't work, you set up the account manually, by entering your secret code here. That is all you have to do to get it going. In the rare case that someone may have compromised your phone, or come into your account here and discovered what your key is, they could set up your Google Authenticator for your account on their own devices. If such a thing should happen, you can come in here and click Reset Google Authenticator, and click on save changes, and that will reset your Two Factor authentication, change your secret key, and allow you to reset up Google Authenticator on the devices that you actually want to have it on.
Verification
When you save your new Two-Factor settings, and choose Google Authenticator, LuxSci is going to ask you to enter a code from Google Authenticator ... to verify that you have it set up properly. Once you do, your settings are saved.
Logging in
Next, lets log out, and log in again. When you log in ... LuxSci will prompt you, after you have entered your password correctly, for your Google Authenticator code. You enter that ... it'll log in, and you're in.
Extra Protection
As you can see, using any Two-Factor authentication mode allows you extra protection on your account. If someone steals your username and password, they still can't get in because they would need to be able to authenticate through Google Authenticator, or one of the other Two Factor methods, if you have enabled one of them. I hope you find this useful, and I hope you're able to secure your account more fully.
