How to use 2FA with your Amazon Web Services account

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a central component of many companies. This makes it all the more important to protect one's own account, especially as a root user. This is where multifactor authentication, or MFA comes in, it is a great way to increase account security.

We will show you in a simple step-by-step explanation, how to set up MFA for your account with an Authenticator app. To do this, we'll use the browser route.

Open the settings

a. Click your user name in the upper right corner to display the settings.

b. Next, click on the "Security Credentials" menu item to enter the security settings of your account.

c. Next, click on the "Assign MFA" item to begin the setup process

Setting up your device

d. Name your device with which you want to execute the second factor (the name in the picture is just an example), at the item "Select MFA device" it continues.

Important: You have several authentication options to choose from here, but the path presented here deals exclusively with the authentication app. However, you can set up multiple devices for your root account, but only one after the other and not simultaneously.

e. Select the "Authetification app" item

f. Click "Next

Registering your 2-factor secret.

On your device, you will need an authentication app to successfully implement the following steps. In this explanation, the way with heylogin is explained, but you can also follow the instructions with any other authentication app.

g. If you have installed an authentication app, you must enter the secret for PIN generation in this app. You can do this either via a QR code or by entering the key by hand. We use the QR code for our example. To display the QR code, please click on the blue area.

h. If you use heylogin, the overlay will now be activated. You just need to click the "Add to login" button to add the secret to your login.

i. Copy the pin in the overlay via the "Copy" button.

j. Paste the PIN in the field "MFA code 1" and repeat the process with the next PIN for "MFA code 2”

Done, your multifactor authentication is successfully set up. You might be wondering what else heylogin does differently than the other solutions besides helping you set it up. Then the next section is the right one for you.

The secure solution for your business

heylogin not only makes it easy for you to set up multi-factor security for web services, it also makes logging in with another factor besides your password a breeze. And yes, it's all 2-factor protected. And it works like this:

heylogin uses your smartphone's security chip instead of a master password to encrypt your data. With the end-to-end encryption used, decryption is not possible without possession of the smartphone. Additionally, to unlock the heylogin app, you also need the PIN, FaceID or fingerprint.

For you this means:

You can unlock heylogin once a day, then log in on any website with one click
No matter if it’s password or 2FA PIN, everything is filled in automatically with one click for you
Team features make onboarding and password management in your company easier

And in addition to integrations for Microsoft Azure AD and Google Workspace, as with AWS, heylogin also gives you the option to use additional devices like Yubikeys for unlocking.

But with or without heylogin, protecting your most important accounts, such as AWS, is more important than ever. With heylogin, it just works a lot better ;)