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productivity tips

Are your password choices putting your business systems at risk?

Do you have a robust policy in place that minimises network breaches from weak passwords?

In December 2009 a major breach led to 32 million passwords reaching the Internet.  The actual favourite three password choices were;

  1. 123456
  2. 12345
  3. 123456789

The consequence of poor passwords means in today’s world of automated cyber attacks, that with only minimal effort, a hacker can gain access to one new account/application every second—or 1000 accounts every 17 minutes.

For businesses, password insecurity can have serious implications. Employees using the same passwords on personal web-mail or social networking sites that they use in the workplace bring the possibility of compromising business systems, especially if they are using common, easy to crack passwords.

Basic KS Recommendations

Users:

  1. Choose a strong password that reflects that protects the privacy of the information you store. Making a password that’s hard to crack doesn’t mean it needs to be hard to remember.
  2. Use a different password for all sites/applications – even for the ones where privacy isn’t a major issue.
  3. Never trust a 3rd party with your important passwords (Email, Log-in, Banking etc.)

Administrators:

  1. Enforce strong password policy – if you give the users a choice, it is very likely that they will choose weak passwords.
  2. Make sure passwords are not transmitted in clear text. Always use HTTPS on log-in.
  3. Employ aggressive anti-brute force mechanisms to detect and mitigate brute force attacks on log-in credentials.

For more information on network protection and password policy.

Find out how we can help protect your network from weak Password Policy

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