An organization has implemented an additional layer of authentication for all employee logins to the corporate network. Recently, several employees reported difficulty accessing their accounts, even after entering their passwords correctly. Which of the following is the most likely cause of this issue?
The employees' time settings are not synchronized between their devices and the authentication service.
The authentication provider is experiencing a temporary service outage.
The organization has recently increased the password complexity requirements.
The employees are entering their usernames incorrectly.
The most likely cause of the issue is that the employees' time settings are not properly synchronized between their authentication devices and the service used to verify their identity. These systems often rely on time-based one-time passwords (TOTP), which require synchronized time settings to generate and validate the correct code. If the time discrepancy is significant, the generated codes will not match between the device and the server, causing login failures. Other potential issues, such as username errors or temporary service outages, are less likely to affect multiple users at once, and password complexity does not influence the functioning of the additional authentication codes.
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What are time-based one-time passwords (TOTP)?
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Why is time synchronization important for authentication systems?
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How can employees ensure their devices have the correct time settings?