NCSC Taps Influencers To Make 2FA Go Viral

The world's biggest brands have benefited from influencer marketing for years – now the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has hopped on the bandwagon to preach two-factor authentication (2FA) to the masses.

It's the latest effort to improve the nation's cyber resilience as part of the Stop! Think Fraud campaign launched in February 2024 under Rishi Sunak's government, drafting in comedic sketch artists and Instagram personal finance gurus to promote wider uptake of security technologies.

In one video posted by comedy skit account thesquidvids in their typical style, the three social media stars satirize all the hack tropes that TV shows and movies have exhausted over the years.

In the form of a movie password-hacking sequence, they talk about breaking down a firewall and "obscuring the mainframe using a trojan horse," re-reversing the polarity by "dropping a logic bomb," and successfully "copying the blockchain."

The skit all plays out with colorful code floating around a TV as if done using a crude PowerPoint presentation in the background, all against a backing track of Mission Impossible-esque action-thriller music to really give it that Hollywood-style urgency.

The social media comics then correctly guess an account password (BulldogSlapheadJalfrezi47?), which follows the NCSC's recommended Three Random Words guidance as well as a number and special character, but find themselves stumped when 2FA kicks in to protect the account.

"What, so there's literally nothing we can do?" said one accomplice to the ringleader.

"Nope," he responded. "As long as he's got two-step verification we're not getting any further, I don't think."

"Fair enough. I guess that's the end of the film really."

The video from edjonesuk sees a team of criminals ("Masters of Mayhem") trying to console their distraught colleague who hasn't "done any frauds" because 2FA keeps getting in the way.

Millennialmoneyuk's version is much drier and simply talks about the dangers of not enabling strong account protections.

The NCSC's efforts to promote cybersecurity and the various ways organizations and consumers can improve their defenses against cyberattacks have previously involved blog posts, podcasts, working with news organizations, and updating their own social media feeds.

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• Severity of the risk facing the UK is widely underestimated, NCSC annual review warns

An NCSC spokesperson told The Register that the latest push to use influencers was to help amplify the pro-2FA message to wider audiences.

"To boost public awareness about the crucial benefits of enabling two-step verification on their most important accounts, we've partnered with popular social media influencers to amplify this vital message and encourage a wider audience to adopt secure online habits," they said.

The latest round of influencer engagement marks the NCSC's second foray into this type of marketing. It previously used personal finance, family, and comedy influencers in November to spread the not-so-festive cheer about Christmas scams.

We also asked the NCSC how much these influencers were paid for their time, alas it didn't respond.

The NCSC supports the Stop! Think Fraud campaign along with Action Fraud, the UK's cybercrime reporting organization, and the National Crime Agency (NCA), the UK's law enforcement agency for serious and organized crime.

At its launch last year, Stop! Think Fraud was billed as a "ground-breaking step forward" in the fight against fraud, a crime that former security minister Tom Tugendhat said "ruins lives."

The campaign was created to reach a mass audience and is supported by various industries including tech, finance, and retail, as well as victim care agencies and consumer groups. ®