Are Your Password Practices Falling Short? Let’s Build Them Up

When it comes to your business’ cybersecurity, passwords are a pretty critical part of the system. This means that making sure they are secure is just as critical…however, that is not to say that this is easy. We, however, wanted to make sure that creating sufficiently secure passwords for all of your accounts is a far simpler prospect by the time we’re finished here.

What Password Best Practices Do We Recommend?

Here’s a quick list of some of our usual suspects:

• Keep them complex: Fill your passwords with upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters.
• Longer passwords are better: The longer a password is, the more likely it is that an attacker will get it incorrect. Do your best to create memorable, not guessable, passwords.
• Use passphrases instead: Passphrases are effectively the upgraded version of a password, as they are far harder to guess while much easier to remember. 
• Use a unique one for each account: Let me ask you this…would you rather one of your accounts be breached, or all of them? Using a different password for each protects all of your other accounts.

These practices will result in more complex passwords, which will be inherently more secure. On top of these, there’s still more you can do to keep your various accounts safe.

Other Means of Protecting Your Accounts

Some additional practices and technologies take the above precautions to the next level. Implementing multi-factor authentication and utilizing a password manager helps you get the most out of your passwords.

Multi-factor authentication calls upon additional authentication protocols to ensure your security. By requiring a user to provide an additional proof of identity—whether that’s a second password or PIN, a physical hardware key, or biometric scan—MFA makes your account far more secure.

Password managers help make the “different password for each account” practice far easier to manage. These tools store your passwords behind encryption and a single master password, allowing you to store and automatically populate your credentials as needed. These tools can even assist you in creating secure passwords to use, truly making proper security the easy option.

XFER can provide you and your employees with the tools you need to be productive while helping you remain secure in the process. Call us at 734-927-6666 / 800-GET-XFER to learn more.