Whether with online banking, the Google account or another online service, all of us have encountered it: two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication builds in an additional hurdle when logging in, but it very much has its purpose, which is to better protect data. By requesting a second level of security, whether it is sending an SMS, an e-mail, confirmation via fingerprint or a predefined security question, the data is additionally secured which makes it more difficult for it to be misused or stolen.
The project, which is being led by the HRZ and is currently in the pilot phase with a limited group of users, is being scientifically accompanied by the two working groups of Prof. Meier and Prof. Smith from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bonn. For the pilot phase, people from different areas and institutions were selected for area-wide tests.
The Uni-ID of individual employees is hereby secured for individual services. However, for the time being only in the test system without access to production data. Another goal of the project is to test second factors, for which the HRZ has purchased different hardware tokens that are now being testet. Hardware tokens are devices that communicate via an interface with the device. In many cases, this is the USB port where the authentication process takes place to transmit the authentication information. The use of a separate device as another factor here has the advantage that many attacks on operating systems are not or not easily feasible.
We will keep you informed about further developments.