Google Intros Two-Step Authentication for Google Apps

Posted 09/20/2010 at 8:09am | by Paul Lilly

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Google today announced it's giving administrators an extra layer of security to user logins by implementing a two-step authentication process that requires a combination of a password and a verification code via the users' mobile phones.

"Google Apps Premier, Education, and Government Edition administrators can now have users sign in with the combination of their password (something they know) and a one-time verification code provided by a mobile phone (something they have)," Google announced in a blog post. "Users can continue to access Google Apps from Internet-connected devices, but with stronger protections to help fend off risks like phishing scams and password reuse."

Google promises to also port this two-step authentication over to Google Apps Standard Edition in the "coming months," giving hundreds of millions of individual Google users access to greater security.

In the same blog post, Google also announced new mobile editing capabilities for Google Docs on the iPad and Android platform, which it says it plans to roll out in the next few weeks.