Password Security Tips

The first Thursday of May recognizes World Password Day. In honor of this holiday, we’ve compiled a list of password security tips to help keep your personal and business information secure.

Password Security Tips for Users

Most of us complete activities on digital devices of some kind, so be sure your personal passwords aren’t easy to crack.

• “Password” is not a good password.
• Do not include personal details in your passwords like birthdays, pet names, or favorite hobbies. Other people can know or discover that information.
• To brainstorm a password that is hard for outsiders to guess but possible for you to remember, we recommend picking a sequence of three or four random nouns. The resulting length and unpredictability of stringing random nouns together makes a password extremely difficult to correctly guess.
• Avoid using the same password for multiple accounts.
• Implement password manager programs like LastPass or KeePass to store your usernames and passwords. This way, you can resist the temptation of writing down all your login information on a piece of paper or in a digital file. Password managers also prevent you from consistently forgetting and resetting login information for your numerous accounts.
• Hive Systems has developed a password table to demonstrate that using a higher number and wider variety of characters makes guessing your password much more difficult for hackers.

Password Security Tips for System Administrators

Taking the time as a business to ensure your employees utilize secure password practices is time well spent. The cost of successful cyberattacks can be significant. 

• Instruct employees to keep their work-related login information different from any logins for personal accounts.
• For organizations with Microsoft 365 programs, Microsoft recommends requiring passwords to have a minimum length of 14 characters and banning common passwords to help prevent vulnerable logins.
• Incorporate multi-factor authentication so network access requires multiple forms of identity verification. Otherwise, a hacker can wreak havoc simply by discovering or correctly guessing a password.

If you have any questions about evaluating or improving the security of your passwords, contact the Abstract team for a consultation. Our technicians can provide password security training to individuals and businesses.