14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter's head of security Bob Lord gave a talk at Hack in the Box 2013 Amsterdam describing Twitter's efforts to nurture a security culture inside the company. In the light of the recent attack that resulted in 250,000 accounts being possibly compromised, security is a hot topic at Twitter.
It's not just internal security, Twitter promised to beef up security for users as well. One obvious way of doing that is by enabling two-step or two-factor authentication. Several other large companies, starting with Google, have done that already.
Twitter is working on it, we know this thanks to a job posting for a security engineer which specifically listed two-factor authentication technology.
But Twitter itself hasn't actually said anything officially about this. At Hack in the Box, we had a chance to ask Lord about this, whether Twitter is building a two-factor authentication system and how it is coming along.
Unfortunately, he didn't have anything to announce officially, but it's clear he was expecting the question, "so it's 57 minutes into my presentation until I get the first two question," he added, jokingly.
Whether the fact that he was expecting questions about this is an admission that Twitter is working on it or not is up to you to decide.
In all likelihood, it is something Twitter is exploring, but it doesn't look like the option will be offered to users for at least a few more months.
This "when it's done" approach is not new to Twitter, it took months for the option to download your entire Twitter archive to become available after it announced it.
During that time, Twitter was constantly badgered with questions about it. Perhaps in an effort to avoid the same distractions, it's choosing not to say anything for now, not until it has something to show for it.