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Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency
America's Cyber Defense Agency

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America's Cyber Defense Agency
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Multifactor Authentication

MFA prevents unauthorized access to your data and applications by requiring a second method of verifying your identity, making you much more secure.

Cybersecurity Best Practices

  • Organizations and Cyber Safety
  • Identify Theft and Personal Cyber Threats
  • CISA Director Easterly Remarks at Carnegie Mellon University

Overview

The most common password in the country is still 123456. And even if you have a complex password, bad cyber actors unfortunately still have ways of getting past it. Using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is a powerful way to protect yourself and your organization. The use of MFA on your accounts makes you 99% less likely to be hacked.

MFA is a layered approach to securing data and applications where a system requires a user to present a combination of two or more credentials to verify a user’s identity for login. MFA increases security because even if one credential becomes compromised, unauthorized users will be unable to meet the second authentication requirement and will not be able to access the targeted physical space, computing device, network, or database.  

CISA’s Role  

CISA works to inform and encourage individuals and organizations to implement MFA on all devices because of the security it provides. CISA strives to inform the public about what MFA is, how it works, why it's important, and how to implement it. 

Watch videos

2 Legit to Quit - Enable Multi-Factor-Authentication (MFA) Today!

CISA Director Jen Easterly discusses enabling MFA.

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