Doubling down: How Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) boosts online security

Passwords have long been the bedrock of online security, but the vulnerabilities are obvious, ranging from human error to phishing attacks. Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) could significantly enhance online authentication, complementing tried-and-trusted methods to bolster user safety. It’s increasingly clear that passwords alone simply aren’t enough. If a password is stolen or otherwise breached, the consequences can be serious. According to the Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), stolen credentials appeared in almost a third (31%) of breaches over the past decade. Even if your password is strong, it doesn’t mean you’re safe. While poor choices like ‘password’ or ‘123456’ featured among the top five stolen passwords identified in the Specops Breached Password Report 2025, we also found that almost a quarter of the stolen passwords analysed (230 million) had actually met standard complexity requirements. There’s also the common error of reusing passwords across multipl ... Read full article.