If you’re a Google Authenticator user, something the company has supported for years, you’re part of one of its two big user groups. On one side are those who, for whatever reason they lost access to the app on the device they were using it onand on the other side are those who fear that it might ever happen. Obviously, the former are the worst hit, but as a member of the latter group, I can guarantee that every time one stops to think about the possible consequences of losing one’s phone, it stops working. suddenly they steal it from us…

Two-factor authentication (2FA) has become a very real need with the passage of time and the spread of cybercrime. Many users prefer the password+SMS modality, but the truth is that short messages for mobile phones proved to be the most dangerous system get one-time keys typical of these systems. However, services like Google Authenticator, Authy, and the like offer a more than adequate level of security.

Some online services offer, for the hypothetical loss of access to the application that generates the access codes, a series of one-time keys that we can use to regain access. However, downloading and storing these special keys is also a security issue, which is why many users end up excluding this option and not downloading them. Which brings us back to square one, before losing access to the app.

The search engine company claims to have been aware of this for a long time, and as a result, as we can read on the company’s security blog, Google Authenticator now supports syncing Google accounts in the cloud. This feature is already globally available and to use it, just download the latest app update, open it and enter our Google account to sync.

From this point if we install the application on another device like we will only need to sign in with a Google account and we will immediately resume generating one-time keys for the services we have already configured on the other device. In addition, with cloud synchronization, whenever we add a service from any device, it is immediately available on others.

Of course, on the one hand, this gives us the confidence that we know we can renew our approaches, although it also means that we need to be even more confident in protecting access to our Google account, otherwise we could open access to the accounts we wanted to protect with this system to all potential attackers. So, and if you’re thinking about it, yes, enabling Google Authenticator cloud sync is completely optional, at least for now. Which brings us back to square one after losing access… how hard is it to find a 100% reliable solution, right?