Password security

Every day, we read stories about the latest business to suffer from a cyber attack. Businesses install quality security software and password protected servers to guard against cyber threats. However, the weakest link in your IT security could be your employees and the strength of the passwords they use to log in to your systems.
 

A huge problem for businesses is people use passwords that they can easily remember such as password123 (one of the most commonly used). More sophisticated security means users often have to include special characters so perhaps they are now using p@ssword123. This isn’t going to do much to secure your IT systems.

Many firms will provide IT security training to their staff, encouraging the use of more complex passwords. That is good unless the team members start writing their passwords down and leaving them on their desk.

You can encourage people to use complex, more secure passwords that they can easily remember by using a password manager and generator.

A password manager and generator is

a piece of software that generates secure passwords for all relevant accounts and stores them securely either on their server, on a USB drive or locally on your PC. The software will encrypt and store password information so you only have to remember one password for the password manager itself. 

Password manager and generator services are available online from the likes of LastPass, Dashlane or KeePass Password Safe. Larger businesses might want to use an enterprise level system such as Sticky Password from AVG. Perhaps this is the way forward for password security until fingerprint scanning or facial recognition become mainstream options for businesses