PASSWORD SECURITY: What You Need To Know
Cybersecurity is of the upmost importance and strong passwords play a crucial part in keeping your accounts safe and secure.
Each person accesses numerous websites and accounts on a daily basis, this means different passwords for each. Remembering them all is a challenge, this leads people into the trap of using easy to remember passwords, duplicating them into each account. Which means a huge security risk for your business.
This article will cover everything you and your staff need to know, let’s begin.
Why Strong Passwords Are Important:
“Easy to guess, Easy to hack!”
When easy to remember/guess passwords are used, they usually consist of the following;
- Children’s Names
- Pet Names
- Year of birth
- Favourite colour
- Numbers in order, i.e. 1234 or 4321
- The word “Passw0rd”
NEVER use easy to remember passwords, various information can be found out about you online by cybercriminals.
When Cybercriminals are successful at guessing your passwords, you have handed them the keys to the kingdom.
7 Of The Most Common Password Mistakes:
- Using the same password for all applications and websites
- Using an easy to remember, common password such as; “Passw0rd” or “password1234”
- Not using 12 characters, including letters, numbers and symbols
- Never updating passwords
- Ticking “remember me” when logging into websites
- Sharing passwords with colleagues via email
- Using the internet browser to remember all passwords
The Cost of Being Hacked:
Being Hacked has devastating consequences for businesses of any size. The consequences are below;
- Loss of reputation
- Loss of funds
- Damaged credit rating
- Loss of confidential data
- Loss of trust
- Losing clients
- Log in credentials being stolen
- Unauthorized purchases
- Personal data being sold on the dark web
- Identity fraud
Tips For Creating And Remembering Strong Passwords:
- Never use the same password twice
- Passwords should be at least 12 characters long and include a mixture of Uppercase, Lowercase, Numbers and Symbols
- Passwords should be changed every 90 days
- Never use easy to guess, personal passwords
- Use 3 random words
- Use a Password Manager such as; Bitwarden, this is the password manager we use
- Set Up Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Benefits Of A Password Manager:
Most people don’t have the ability to remember so many passwords at once on come up with strong ones. This is where password managers come in.
Password managers have many benefits and there’s plenty to choose from.
Some of the benefits are listed below;
- They generate strong passwords for you, storing them in a secure vault/cloud
- Frequently checks if there has been and leaks of data, informing you straight away if you have been compromised, requesting a new generated password.
- You only need to remember ONE password to access the secure vault. It’s important to make this a strong one.
- Access your secure vault on any of your devices
- Very secure, always looking out for bugs and making the password manager hackerproof.
- Your account will use 2 Factor Authentication for protection
- Centralised control of passwords for your whole team
How We Can Help You:
Get in touch with our team for cybersecurity advice, helping secure your business.