As we have gone about building Fusion 360 as a cloud based product development platform, we have had our share of people asking questions about security practices and the safety of their data in the cloud. It used to take a lot of one on one conversations in the early days (1.5-2 years ago) to communicate our cloud security best practices to build customer confidence to really use a cloud based solution for their product development needs. Our Trust Center, as well as our Security whitepaper does a good job of explaining our security practices for data.

Security is not just a one way street though. As secure as we make our back end, there are things that you can do to make sure things stay secure. This includes using a strong and unique password for your A360 account and not sharing your password with others. So what exactly makes a strong password? Really at this point, the longer the better and a combination of words that don’t usually appear together makes it really hard to brute force it. I think this XKCD strip illustrates the point well.

Image courtesy of xkcd.com

After picking a strong password, what else can you do to secure your account? Well, the next step is to use two factor authentication where you have to use a second set of credentials from a separate channel to verify your identity. The most common implementation for this is to use your cell phone as the second factor to get a code sent to you via an App or text message to you so that you are entering your password and a code that only you can have. This way even if your password is compromised, an attacker still can’t get in to your account without have physical access to your phone as well.

So how do I go about enabling two factor authentication for my account?

• Login to https://accounts.autodesk.com/Profile/Security
• Click on Setup 2 Step Verification

You will be asked to re-enter your password to make sure that you are the one making this change and it’s not someone else who happened to find your computer with you logged in.

Enter your phone number to get the codes sent to it. I’m entering a US number but you can enter a number for anywhere in the world by selecting the proper prefix in the first field.

This will send a text message to you with a security code to be entered on the next screen.

And we are done! This page also tells you how to enable authenticator apps like Google Authenticator or Duo Mobile instead of text messages if you prefer.

Now that you are all set, the next time you login to an Autodesk site or application, you will be prompted for a security code after entering your password. Let’s try this in our favorite app, Fusion 360:

Enter the code and you are all set! You can rest easier knowing that you have done your bit to keep your account and your data safe!

In the future we will be rolling out enhancements to allow team hub administrators to require two factor authentication to login to the team hub instead of it being up to the user as today.