Identity theft is becoming a growing concern. The latest figures released by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse’s Data Breach Timeline tracking tool state that more than 865 million records were exposed through data breaches between 2005 and May 28, 2014, according to a report by ABC News. .

The Milken Institute puts the number of compromised records at 1.1 billion between 2004 and 2012. The Identity Theft Resource Center reported 91,982,172 exposed records in 2013, and more than 11 million in 2014 so far, the report added.

No one is safe from the scourge of growing identity theft, be it large corporations, banks, government institutions and financial institutions or small and medium-sized businesses or individuals.

If we look at some composite figures, identity theft emerges as one of the biggest risks and threats in the rapidly growing cyber world. If left unchecked and stopped early, identity theft will wreak more havoc than it already has.

• More than 10 million identities were compromised in each of the top eight attacks in 2013.

• Identity theft is the fastest growing white collar crime

• Identity theft claims 900,000 new victims each year

• The cost to businesses is more than $50 billion

• Cost per incident for the company $6,383

• 30 hours per victim spent resolving the issue, as shown by identity theft statistics

For small and medium-sized businesses, cyber security is becoming a bigger concern with each passing day, mainly because, while they are not in a position to spend large amounts of funds to beef up their IT security, they are no less vulnerable to theft. of data and malicious attacks

Cybersecurity cannot be guaranteed with the wave of a magic wand. The vast cyber space has hundreds of loopholes and loose ends that hackers use to access sensitive databases and steal users’ personal information.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), which often do not pay much attention to cybersecurity under the assumption that their databases are not the primary targets of hackers, are actually at serious risk of malicious cyberattacks . There are many reasons for this. First of all, SMEs often have lower budgets for cybersecurity and lack specialized staff to protect data. Its databases provide hackers with quick and easy access to larger and more valuable databases of users, vendors, partners, customers, etc. A recent Verizon study indicated that 67 percent of investigated violations occurred within organizations of 100 or fewer employees, and often independent franchisees of larger companies.

Therefore, it is becoming essential for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to adopt two-factor authentication to reduce the risk of cybersecurity attacks. The technology used by 2FA is cost-effective and affordable and therefore within the reach of SMEs. Furthermore, the unpredictability of the system ensures that hackers cannot penetrate databases where two-factor authentication is firmly in place. In other words, two-factor authentication is the most critical security measure SMBs can install to protect against critical personal data loss that can lead to identity theft, and its low cost makes it easily affordable.

The biggest advantage of two-factor authentication is that it maps the user’s physical identity to the server. The user is thus identified on the basis of something known to him (username/password) and something in the user’s possessions.

In this way, you have two steps of authentication. The hacker can crack a user’s password, but it will be difficult for the hacker to figure out the one-time password that the user receives on the device he owns.