How strong is your password?
Did you know that having a weak password is one of the biggest security risks you face? This blog focuses on the best practices related that you can follow to ensure passwords are not your weakest link. A recent article states that 81% of data breaches are caused by poor passwords!
- Avoid sequences and repetitions: How many times have you used passwords like dollar12345 or $$$BobMckinley. Passwords containing sequences and repetitions are just easier to hack.
- Avoid using your personal data: Do not make your birth date, bank account number, or address a part of your password. It puts your data at stake if your personal information is stolen.
- Don’t repeat passwords: Make sure you pick unique passwords every time. Unique, not only verbatim, but also in combination. For example, if password one is a combination of number, symbols and letters in that sequence, password two should be letters, numbers and symbols.
- Manual management is not a good idea: Invest in a good management tool. Talk to us about good tools to help with this. But, manually managing passwords, by writing them down on a spreadsheet is a big NO.
- Password sharing: Discourage password sharing across the organization. Every employee should have unique access to data depending on their role and authority. Password sharing gets things done faster, but can do irreversible damage.
- Have a password policy in place and enforce it. This is our strongest recommendation, and one that we can help you with. Conduct timely audits to ensure the passwords match the specified safety standards. Also, take corrective actions against employees who don’t follow your password policies related to password sharing, setting, etc. As part of our Dark Web Monitoring, we provide your employee with newsletters on various security issues, including password creation.
- Don’t use dictionary words: Hacking software programs can guess dictionary words faster. The key is to mix things up a little bit–some numbers, some symbols, some punctuation, and some alphabets.
Don’t choose passwords that are way too simple just because they are easier to remember, because, more often than not, it can get you into a lot of trouble. Call us at 504-301-1094, to discuss how we can keep your data safer.
