Staying safe in our physical and digital worlds

Most of our lives are now connected on the internet. We stay in touch with our loved ones, order food, talk to our doctors, do our banking — and now, many of us also work from home. 

We are all facing challenges we did not predict a few weeks ago. Never before has our society been more dependent on the internet, and never before have people been more vulnerable. Each individual is now exposed to more phishing attacks and we are seeing a new wave of cyber threats capitalizing on the fear surrounding the pandemic.

While hero first responders and doctors are fighting for lives attacked by a biological virus, the global IT security standards community is doing its best to protect us in the digital world. The human body and the internet are both amazing complex structures that will always be attacked, but we are resilient. 

Last year at BlackHat USA, the conference issued its annual 2019 Black Hat USA Attendee Survey, in which one question asked what cybersecurity technologies have been most effective for data security and privacy online. The response was clear: multi-factor authentication (MFA). MFA was the highest ranked security tool for protecting enterprise data, with 82% of respondents citing it as effective. 

History has shown that if we come together and collaborate on solutions, we can invent cures. During the last decade, our team at Yubico has worked closely with internet giants and open standards bodies, and together we invented the best authentication solutions to prevent remote account takeovers: FIDO U2F, FIDO2 and WebAuthn. See the stats below, or read the full research here. 

Since a few weeks ago, most of the Yubico team is working from home, but we have been fortunate to continue to serve our customers, partners and developer community around the world. Moving ahead, we are committed to help make the world safer by continuing to contribute to open security standards, and providing free open source tools and support for technology that makes a difference. We will also continue to donate YubiKeys to non-profit organizations supporting a free open internet and free speech to safeguard security for the world at large.  

Without doubt, the world is in a crisis. But no matter how difficult things get, there is often a way, and through these challenges we can boost our spirits and immune system if we find things that make us smile. A couple of weeks ago, the Yubico team made a short video to explain how FIDO authentication works, which made me smile. I hope it can do the same for you.

Stay healthy and safe. 

P.S. — If you want a dog to look at a computer screen, show cat videos. To learn more about how to secure your remote workers, tune into any of our upcoming and on-demand webinars on BrightTALK.