Earlier this month it was password protection day (5th May). Password protection for businesses is critical for your systems and data. Your employees’ passwords are extremely important so that no one outside the company gains access to your company data. In this article we will be walking you through the most important aspects of password security.
Strong Passwords
A strong password involves many aspects. Firstly, your employees’ passwords should contain at least 8 characters. Every character you add, makes it harder for hackers, so, the more the better. Secondly, a mix of lower-case and upper-case letters is advisable. Thirdly, numbers and symbols are also encouraged and of course there should be no ties to your personal information. If your employees adopted such approaches when producing a password your company will be in a much better position security wise.
Password Manager
Password manager apps can be very useful and will store passwords for each of the services that you use. They typically guide you in generating random and unique passwords. One benefit of this is that it helps meet the complex password requirements that most services demand. If, for whatever reason, some passwords cannot be stored in a password manager, then we would recommend using sentence-based passwords. These are far easier for the human mind to remember. Plus, longer passwords increase the difficulty level for hackers to breach your account.
What You Should Never Do
So, we have talked about the various steps that you should take to ensure your passwords are strong, but we haven’t yet mentioned what you shouldn’t do. Firstly, you should never share your passwords with anyone. This leaves room for human error and could be devastating. Secondly, don’t reuse the same password. Imagine, if your Google password was leaked, the hacker would try other accounts of yours using the same password. Therefore, its best to have different passwords for each account. Thirdly, you should never write your passwords down. Whether this is in a book or a single piece of paper; if you lose it, it could fall into the wrong hands.
Recap:
Do:
- Use at least 8 characters
- Use a mix of letters (lower-case & upper-case)
- Use numbers
- Use symbols
Do not:
- Reuse your passwords
- Share your passwords
- Write your password down
- Do not use any personal information in your password
Microsoft No Passwords
Having said all the above, we may find that in the future passwords will become obsolete. Microsoft have announced that users can now delete all their passwords from their accounts and simply login using an authenticator app. 100% of all Microsoft employees are already doing this for their corporate accounts. Microsoft believe that passwords will be a thing of the past soon. They believe that creating unique and complex passwords for every account and trying to remember them is a lot to ask. Therefore, Microsoft are paving the way to a password-less future. For now, the above mentioned in this article still applies and we hope it will be of use to you. If you have any security concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01223 921 000 or email at ask@cambridgesupport.com.