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Google Apps Gets Two-Factor Security
judgecorp writes "Passwords alone are not enough to secure access. Many organisations require two-factor authentication with a token. Google just added free two-factor verification to Google Apps, sending a one-off token to the user's mobile phone. It's good to have this for free, and it backs up Google's assertion that cloud apps are more secure — but it doesn't answer how it helps if an intruder is getting into Apps through a lost or stolen phone."
For the low low price of your mobile phone number we will give you some extra security!
I'm not sure that necessarily makes your data less secure. An administrator always has access to your data, whether that admin works for your company or another company doesn't necessarily change the likelihood that the admin will abuse their power.
...which means if someone gets one factor (your phone), they still don't have the other (your password).
Learn to keep track of your damn phone...
We're all full up on Crazy here...
Agreed. I fail to see how sensitive information being sent over the Internet could be more secure than keeping sensitive information stored on a computer that doesn't even have a network card installed.
Living With a Nerd
It sort of compromises everything - but that doesn't mean it's a bad form of authentication, does it?
Once your machine, token, credentials, anything have been physically compromised, it's generally accepted that you're hosed (at least for that one factor).
Seems like a step in the right direction.
I'm worried because in all the years I've had a Google mail account I haven't had any issues, yet a month after getting an Android 2.1 phone, despite being really careful about only installing high rated applications with tens of thousands of users and mostly keeping an eye on what they're allowed to access, my gmail account was hacked and used to send out a spam email via a mobile device in canada.
I've never had an email account hacked before, so I'm pretty convinced that some phone app has leaked my account details (as it's the gmail account tethered to my phone).
Admittedly Google immediately suspended my account due to suspicious activity (access from Mobile Canada (71.17.214.49), I live in the UK), and a token to my mobile phone was how I unlocked it and changed my password, but I'm still rather wary now despite how much I love my Galaxy S mobile.
I have bought apps I don't want to lose wiping the phone, and I have no real way to tell what it may have been that leaked my data.
I have droidsecurity antivirus installed now, but wish google could offer some stronger post-install controls on what an app's allowed to do.
The most interesting inference to me is that some third-party vendor who is serving up cloud apps has employees who are inherently more trustworthy than the ones you handpicked are.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
but it doesn't answer how it helps if an intruder is getting into Apps through a lost or stolen phone
When you lose your phone, the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of the time they just want to wipe your iPhone and sell it to the local pawn shop. They don't care about your data, your songs, your apps, etc. they simply see that shiny, new hardware = money. Same thing with laptops, they don't care about the data on it, they want to wipe "that funny looking OS" off of it and put a pirated copy of XP on there and sell it on eBay.
The idea that stolen gadgets are going to be used for something beyond simple hardware really overestimates either your value of data or the intelligence of thieves.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
but it doesn't answer how it helps if ...
Judgecorp should wait until after second coffee to post.
What happens when an attacker has both factors in a two-factor situation is that security is breached. The same applies for any number of factors.
The objective is to improve security, nothing can guarantee it. No "answer" is needed.
(.....)
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
It appears Google's argument is "it's safer/easier/cheaper to use Google Docs than emailing your file as an attachment, or letting employees put it on laptops and USB keys which they then loose."
If you have information which can only be transmitted between a computer monitor and the user's eyeballs, I don't think Google has any thing to peddle to your corporation, unless they start selling Faraday Cages to guard against Van Eck phreaking.
I know where the employees who work for me live. I know what car they drive. I know where they like to go to lunch. I have their social security number and a copy of their driver's license.
I also know a guy named Tony. Tony likes to break things. And ever since some pencil-neck computer nerd posted pictures of Tony's girlfriend on-line, Tony really likes to break computer nerds.
With Google, these things are much less transparent.
Agreed. I fail to see how sensitive information being sent over the Internet could be more secure than keeping sensitive information stored on a computer that doesn't even have a network card installed.
Security and Availability go hand in hand. Security isn't just, NO ONE EVER GETS TO LOOK AT MY DATA. Security is also making sure that your data remains undamaged (integrity) and available to the people that you want to see it.
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Google, in turn, has a vested interest in ensuring that their paying customers' data stays private.
Google has a vested interest in ensuring that their paying customers' data breaches stay private. That's number one. If they can't ensure number one, then your statement takes priority.
The issue with Google's model is that you rely on Google's policy/process and you cannot directly negotiate/control that. (Not saying that their policy/process isn't acceptable for some people, but that you don't get to directly influence it)
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If you look at a cloud provider like Google, there are two paying customers: Enterprises and businesses, and advertisers. So, on one hand, the cloud provider needs to protect data for people paying for their apps. On the other hand, they need to cough up data so the advertisers keep paying.
This bifurcation is why I prefer using E-mail providers whose sole revenue stream is customers. This way, advertisers have no vested interested in what data sits on the servers. Hosted Exchange providers come to mind here, same with me.com.
You could say the exact same thing for a sysadmin that you pay yourself, however, which was the whole point of the parent of the post I replied to.
Which is why I continued my comment beyond that point and discussed direct and indirect control.
The sysadmin reports to me. Part of my job is making sure he is doing the job I'm paying him to do. Keeping the comparison simple, if I'm the company president, my level of control over behavior is 100% You can only say the sysadmin has the same interest if I fail to effectively manage the person I hired.
Google's sysadmins report to them. I am but one of thousands of equivalent contracts to them. Therefore the level of control I have over their internal process and behavior is immediately reduced by a factor of several thousand. Everything I would want to do or change is subject to lag, both in time, and in effect.
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The only kind of "private" e-mail that exists is the kind that you encrypt. Once a plaintext e-mail leaves your client, there is no guarantee that some third party won't read it.
Security through obscurity is the same as no security at all.
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