Protecting applications and devices using passwords is common practice. What's even better is securing them with multiple passwords or other login requirements, a practice known as multi-factor authentication (MFA).
The reason why is simple: The more log in steps—or "factors"—you require, the harder it becomes for malicious actors to access sensitive resources or disrupt critical services. With multi-factor authentication, your apps and infrastructure remain safe even if the bad guys manage to compromise a password or circumvent access control.
That said, multi-factor authentication can be taken too far and has known shortfalls. Before adding MFA security to every system in your business, it's important to consider the potential drawbacks of this approach and understand its limitations.
To help you decide when and how to use multi-factor authentication, this article explains what MFA means, how MFA security works, and when it does and doesn't make sense to take advantage of MFA security.