Comments on: Two Factor Authentication & Yubikey

By: Entropy1024

Entropy1024 — Mon, 09 May 2011 14:28:01 +0000

I have a Lenovo T60 which has a built in fingerprint reader. This works at a BIOS level and is required at boot, before any OS has been loaded/run.
I agree that if you have a short password then typing it is faster and probably more reliable. However as most of my passwords are 12+ characters of mixed case, numbers & special characters a finger swipe is much faster, even if it fails from time to time
Hope this helps.

By: step21

step21 — Sat, 07 May 2011 19:27:38 +0000

How did you get your laptop login to be 2-factor? Which OS do you use? On Windows 7 my fingerprint reader only works as an alternative to the password, not an additional check. Just curious. On the other hand I would not be sure whether I would want to rely on the fingerprint as a necessity, because sometime typing the password is just so much quicker than waiting for the fingerprint reader to initialize or to scan the finger a few times (because often it doesn’t work on the first try)

By: The Cloud. Resistance is Futile. | Entropy1024

The Cloud. Resistance is Futile. | Entropy1024 — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:54:50 +0000

[...] Privacy issues are a major concern for me but as with anything else in life you have to weigh the benefits with the possible problems. Having all my notes, contacts, calendar info, email, documents, music, photos etc available pretty much anywhere at anytime outweigh the possible problems. Where possible use encryption, just make sure you use high entropy passwords and use different passwords for every site. Managing this can become a problem unless you use services such as LastPass which stores all your passwords in the cloud under one master password. Now because this one master password is the ‘keys to the kingdom’ it’s worth substantially beefing up your protection of it with multi factor authentication. [...]

By: Brian Vargas

Brian Vargas — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:11:33 +0000

You can also use the Yubikey for two-factor authentication on Windows machines and Active Directory domains. At 1/10th the cost of the market leader, and since the Yubikeys never expire, it’s a big win for small and medium businesses that couldn’t otherwise afford two-factor.