We hope everyone has a great Christmas and New Year’s season.  This time of year usually means gathering with family and friends, enjoying good food, and taking a relaxing break from the office.

Not so for IT staff, apparently.  According to this article, more than half of IT personnel will be working during the holiday season to address tech issues.  Among those issues, over half are related to remote access or security issues.  Some other interesting seasonal tech issues include the following:

IT user problems reported as a result of Christmas/holiday celebrations

• A lost device (phone, laptop, tablet) at a Christmas party, bar or restaurant: 31%
• A lost device in the back of a taxi or on public transportation: 16%
• An email sent to the wrong recipient resulting in a data breach: 7%
• An email with the wrong attachment sent, resulting in a data breach: 8%
• Not aware of any of the above: 16%

The first two bullet points mean that 47% of IT issues are due to lost devices during Christmas and holiday celebrations.  What if your users use a soft token, such as Google Authenticator, as their second factor to access a network or application?  Are they doomed?

Not with GreenRADIUS.  GreenRADIUS supports multiple tokens simultaneously, meaning each user can have more than one token assigned to him.  For example, one user might have Google Authenticator and a YubiKey assigned to him.  In the event his smartphone is not available, the YubiKey can act as the second factor.  And vice versa.  Plus, users do not need to indicate which token is being used as the second factor.  GreenRADIUS can detect this automatically.  Just another benefit of implementing GreenRADIUS as your 2FA solution.

Be merry and safe!