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World Password Day – Are your employees’ passwords protecting your company?

Published: 5 May 2022

Today is World Password Day! As your employees are the gatekeepers to your companies' critical systems and data, their password choice is extremely important to ensure no one else can gain access outside of the company. How often do you remind your employees about good password hygiene?

Passwords can be compromised in a number of ways, including:

  • Brute Force: A hacker has hundreds of passwords at their disposal and tries these in a multitude of different combinations until the right one works.
  • Credential Stuffing: When a business becomes compromised, their usernames and passwords can become leaked. Credential stuffing is when a hacker takes these details and tries them out on other platforms in hope that the same username and password has been used there too.If you want to check if your email has been found on a data breach list, you can check securely here.  We recommend updating any passwords for accounts that you come across.
  • Social Engineering:  This is commonly done through the likes of phishing emails that trick users into entering their credentials.
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A guide to password protection for your employees

Ensure that your company passwords are secure and kept confidential.  Download your free infographic guide below to share with your employees!

  • Use a strong password
    According to the British NSCS (National Cybersecurity Centre) the best password length is a minimum of 12 characters as this can take over 3 weeks to crack in a brute force attack. They also recommend using the “three random words” logic when creating your password, you can read more about this here.We also advise you to use some numbers and symbols to give you that extra bit of security. So, if you use something like “fencecircushippo” you could consider “fence_circus_hippo22” to further strengthen your passphrases from hackers.
  • Do not write your password down
    The most common mistake people make with passwords is writing them down and leaving them somewhere unsecured, such as in a notebook next to their laptop.A 2021 study conducted by Keeper Security amongst people in the workplace discovered that 57% of respondents wrote their passwords down on sticky notes, of which 67% admitted to having lost these notes.
  • Never re-use a password
    As mentioned above, the use of the same password across multiple accounts can put you at risk of credential stuffing tactics if one is compromised. Using different passwords for different accounts and platforms is always good password hygiene.
  • Enable multi-factor authentication
    Before gaining access to your account or application, multi-factor authentication requires you to verify your identity in more than one way, so if your password is compromised then the second authenticator SMS text or a time-based code is still protecting your account from anyone being able to just login.
  • Leverage a password manager
    Using a password manager makes using a different password easy as it has the capability to generate new strong passwords as well as save your existing ones in a secure place.

 

Find out more and download your free Password Protection Infographic!

Xperience can assist your company with cybersecurity. We can provide end-point solutions, password managers, self-service password management portals for your employees and more.

Contact us and we can arrange for a consultant to discuss your options.

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