Google is serious about two-factor authentication. Good!

“Two factors activated authentication ”is a strong piece of advice that WIRED has he repeated years. By doing so, your password will not be the only line of defense against unauthorized access to your accounts. Only problem? The duty was always in place you to find out how that happened. Now, Google is taking the first steps toward enabling two users by default to enable two factors, and where Google goes in terms of web security, the rest of the industry often follows suit.

The company said blog post will begin this week by asking users who already have two-step verification enabled to authenticate to their Google phone or Gmail account when they sign in by touching the invitation on their phone. (Gmail has about 1.8 billion users; people can create Google Accounts using email addresses from other services.) Google will start automatically selecting data for companies to double-factor data to allow users to interact with these mobile alerts in two-step verification.

“We’ve started with the users who will make the least impact and from there we plan to expand based on the results,” Mark Risher, Google’s director of identity and product security product management, told WIRED. “It’s true that multi-factor authentication is historically considered tedious and difficult to set up, but for many users this is no longer the case.”

Multi-factor authentication adds one or more additional checks to the login process beyond the username and password. Your second factor may be a randomly generated transient code from an authentication application, the presence of a physical authentication key Yubikey, or even a digital token built into your phone. And adding at least one of these extra layers makes it much harder for phishers, scammers, or other malicious hackers to get into your digital accounts.

Multi-factor authentication seems to be a beneficial security feature that companies have not wanted for all uses. Demanding two factors can deter consumers from trying out their services, ultimately harming the business. Users may also lack the equipment or knowledge to navigate multi-factor authentication, otherwise they may be excluded from the services they wish to use.

“Ultimately, we want all of our users to have the best security protection, by default, on their devices and accounts,” says Risher. “At the same time, we recognize that today’s two-step verification options are not suitable for all users, so we are actively working on technologies that provide a secure and equitable authentication experience and eliminate password trust.”

Google users will still be able to choose two-factor authentication if they change their mind. The goal, however, is to push both users and the broader technology industry toward two factors as a basic standard.

Google has been a leader in other major web security transitions since its promotion automatic updates and sandboxing Pushing with Chrome non-HTTPS encrypting web traffic. He’s not, however, the only heavyweight player the user is starting to get used to multi-factor authentication. Apple hasn’t fully ordered two factors for its Apple IDs, but in recent years the company has aggressively promoted the feature and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to choose.

“It’s wonderful to see Google move forward in the industry to enable multi-agent authentication, in this case with our phones,” says Kenn White, security engineer and founder of the Open Crypto Audit Project. “If we make it easier to go beyond simple credentials, that will win for the security of everyone and everyone. And we’re gradually seeing that big organizations like banks and health services need protections like two urgent factors.”