Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) is essential to web security because it immediately neutralizes the risks associated with compromised passwords. If a password is hacked, guessed, or even phished, that’s no longer enough to give an intruder access: without approval at the second factor, a password alone is useless.

Your agency’s Syngency account contains a considerable amount of private data, including your talent’s tax, social security, bank account, and contact information. Syngency takes every precaution to ensure this data is securely transmitted and encrypted in our database, but this data is only as secure as your individual user accounts.

This depends on all of your agency’s users adhering to some basic security best-practices. So, let’s get your account up-to-date, secure, and tighter than the lid on a salsa jar!

There are two important steps you can take to ensure this:

• Make sure all users use strong passwords on their accounts.

• Enable Two-Factor Authentication for all user accounts.

Two-Factor Authentication (or “2FA” as it is commonly referred to), is a second step of authenticating your account when you sign into an online service.

If you use Instagram, Google, QuickBooks, Xero, or hundreds of other services, you will no doubt have received an SMS message with a “one-time code” to be entered into the app. This provides an extra layer of security for your account, your agency’s account, and the protection of your data.

2FA occurs after you have successfully signed-in with your email and password.

You are sent a “one-time password” or “token” which expires within a short amount of time, then providing a new token.

You need to enter this token into Syngency before the expiration time elapses. A unique token, and a limited period of time in which to use it, makes the authentication process highly secure.

Even if someone discovers your sign in details, they won’t be able to proceed past this second step of authentication, as only you have access to it.

Syngency uses Authy to facilitate 2FA, and they provide both desktop and mobile apps for verifying the 2FA process. If you haven’t installed their app, an SMS message will be sent to you with the code instead.

Ryan Marshall