a rsa token would be an example of
two-factor authentication
title: RSA SecurID text: RSA SecurID RSA SecurID, formerly referred to as SecurID, is a mechanism developed by Security Dynamics (later RSA Security and now RSA, The Security Division of EMC) for performing two-factor authentication for a user to a network resource. The RSA SecurID authentication mechanism consists of a "token" — either hardware (e.g. a key fob) or software (a soft token) — which is assigned to a computer user and which creates an authentication code at fixed intervals (usually 60 seconds) using a built-in clock and the card's factory-encoded almost random key (known as the "seed"). The seed is different for each title: RSA SecurID text: the original 64-bit RSA SecurID seed file introduced to the server. Later, the 128-bit RSA SecurID algorithm was published as part of an open source library. In the RSA SecurID authentication scheme, the seed record is the secret key used to generate one-time passwords. Newer versions also feature a USB connector, which allows the token to be used as a smart card-like device for securely storing certificates. A user authenticating to a network resource—say, a dial-in server or a firewall—needs to enter both a personal identification number and the number being displayed "at that moment" on their RSA SecurID token. title: RSA (cryptosystem) text: RSA (cryptosystem) RSA (Rivest–Shamir–Adleman) is one of the first public-key cryptosystems and is widely used for secure data transmission. In such a cryptosystem, the encryption key is public and it is different from the decryption key which is kept secret (private). In RSA, this asymmetry is based on the practical difficulty of the factorization of the product of two large prime numbers, the "factoring problem". The acronym RSA is made of the initial letters of the surnames of Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman, who first publicly described the algorithm in 1978. Clifford Cocks, an English mathematician working for title: RSA Security text: RSA Security RSA Security LLC, formerly RSA Security, Inc. and doing business as RSA, is an American computer and network security company. RSA was named after the initials of its co-founders, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, after whom the RSA public key cryptography algorithm was also named. Among its products are the RSA BSAFE cryptography libraries and the SecurID authentication token. RSA is known for allegedly incorporating backdoors developed by the NSA in its products. It also organizes the annual RSA Conference, an information security conference. Founded as an independent company in 1982, RSA Security was acquired by title: RSA SecurID text: token, and is loaded into the corresponding RSA SecurID server (RSA Authentication Manager, formerly ACE/Server) as the tokens are purchased. On-demand tokens are also available, which provide a tokencode via email or SMS delivery, eliminating the need to provision a token to the user. The token hardware is designed to be tamper-resistant to deter reverse engineering. When software implementations of the same algorithm ("software tokens") appeared on the market, public code had been developed by the security community allowing a user to emulate RSA SecurID in software, but only if they have access to a current RSA SecurID code, and