Passwords guard everything from our cellphones to our bank accounts, but they often present a relatively weak challenge to hackers looking for the information that passwords should protect. New research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, in collaboration with the University of California at Irvine, proposes and tests a variety of methods that add a strong second layer of security to a password.

In a paper presented at the 2014 Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium, researchers offered innovative options to improve the security of two-factor authentication systems while also ensuring the systems' usability.

"There have been many attacks on servers that store passwords lately, such as the breaches at PayPal and LinkedIn," said Nitesh Saxena, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences and a core member of the UAB Center for Cyber Security.