5 ways to improve the strength of your Password
- Updated at
- By Naty Santos
- Passwords
Passwords are insecure by nature, and soon will come a day where they will be phased out for a more secure way to protect your business, but until that day, your company needs to be savvy about protecting its digital identity online.
Intellectual property is no longer safely tucked away in-house but is floating in cyberspace. A single password has the ability to strengthen or weaken your digital security, therefore it is essential that you encourage and enforce strong passwords, especially when the user accounts contain confidential information.
Table of Contents
Below are 5 ways to improve password strength in the workplace:
1 - Longer Passwords
Longer passwords are always more secure than shorter ones.
The biggest issue with password length is a person’s ability to remember it. Use a memorable sentence and take the first letter of each word and capitalize every second one. Choosing a unique, memorable sentence that is relevant to each user will make remembering long passwords much easier.
For example, “Everyone Loves Bacon But Not When It’s Burnt To A Crisp“, becomes ElBbNwIbTaC.
You can enhance this further by adding a random symbol or number to the start or end. For example – ElBbNwIbTaC%4
2 - Avoid Dictionary Words and Phrases
Although using sentences and phrases are a great way to lengthen your passwords, some make the mistake of thinking simple words will be secure. Dictionary words can easily be cracked by hackers and their software.
For example, the password ‘bluecar’ can easily be guessed by software designed to make thousands of attempts per second.
Users should choose words unique to them, such as names or places. Dictionary based hacking is similar to the software used to spam your email inbox by putting together a random assortment of first and last names. So, using any word that comes from a dictionary results in extremely low entropy.
3 - Add Entropy
Password entropy is a measurement of how strong your password is based on its unpredictability and allows you to predict how easily your password can be cracked with guessing, brute force or dictionary attacks. Humans aren’t good at creating passwords with high entropy. However, Vault One is a platform specially designed to create robust and secure passwords that protect your business.
4 - Two Factor Authentication
2FA is a great way to improve password strength. Having two security components instead of one has obvious advantages by making it harder to access, and thus harder to hack.
There should also be a limit to the number of password attempts before a user is denied access, stopping brute force hacks.
5 - Use a Password Manager
If company passwords are a constant nightmare of forgotten credentials, weak passwords and shared logins, consider using a password manager like Vault One.
About Us
The team at VaultOne are experts in protecting the integrity of privileged business accounts. VaultOne creates a digital vault in the cloud that becomes a secure platform for all your business’ login credentials and passwords, from managing passwords and making sure they are secure enough, to warning when a password needs to be regenerated or improved. With VaultOne, you can rest assured that your intellectual property is in safe hands.
Talk to the expert team at VaultOne today and take control of your digital security.
