Microsoft begins rolling out two-factor authentication

The popularity of two-factor authentication is too much for Microsoft, as they will buckle under the pressure and offer two-factor authentication for all 700 million Microsoft accounts. The company announced today that they will be rolling out the new feature over the next few days, giving Microsoft users a little more piece of mind.

Two-factor authentication will protect an entire Microsoft account, including services like Skype and Xbox Live. Currently, the only Microsoft services that offers two-factor authentication are for credit card activities on various websites and services such as commerce.microsoft.com and xbox.com, and SkyDrive.

Two-factor authentication is essentially a new form of credentials. Instead of only needing a password, users are also required to have some sort of device to confirm logging in, such as a mobile phone. Whenever you log into an unknown computer, Microsoft will ask for your password as well as send you a unique code to your mobile phone that you will then enter in into the login screen.

You can set up two-factor authentication on Microsoft’s Account Management page, but as aforementioned, you may not see the new feature pop up until later in the week. We highly recommend setting it up if you rely on your Microsoft account a lot. Even with a secure password, hackers can still get in, but having two-factor authentication makes it much more difficult.