Facebook Protect is coming to India, will provide security to accounts at risk

Facebook Protect is being launched in India. It is a security program for Facebook users that are likely to be the target of bad actors and other threats. It is designed to protect such users from cyberattacks. As a part of the security program, critical Facebook users will be shown a prompt to enable the Facebook Protect option and enable two-factor authentication, which creates another layer of security over the usual passwords. 

As explained by Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Security at Facebook, "There are increased automated defences that we enable on the backend to protect these accounts. It’s additional detection mechanisms that our systems and teams run." Adding to it, Gleicher says that the accounts involved in the Facebook Protect are flagged within Facebook's internal systems so that repeated targeting of any of these accounts shall alert Facebook of potential risk. 

With the new program, Facebook is focussing on two-factor authentication

As revealed by the head of security at Facebook, there are more than 1.5 million Facebook accounts that are enrolled in the Facebook Protect program at the moment. As per the aforementioned, about 63% have turned on two-factor authentication for the very first time. While the Facebook Protect program was first launched in 2018, the company says that it has evolved, especially after the 2020 US election. 

Facebook has also made the two-factor authentication compulsory for those who enroll in the Protect program. The accounts that have to turn on 2FA include that of activists, human rights defenders, and journalists. Facebook is focussing a tad bit more on 2FA as the company believes that the feature is underestimated and underutilized by netizens. Out of the millions of monthly active users, only four percent of the total number have turned on two-factor authentication till November 2021. 

Upon extending the feature to more countries, Facebook's head of security says "we’ve rolled up the mandate first in countries where we know we have the necessary resources in place to smoothly expand and also in countries where we might be seeing critical civic moments like elections coming in the near future, for example, Philippines and Turkey." For users who are not able to access the feature, Facebook will also launch a registration program.