There are numerous reports and studies on how hackers and cybercriminals are attacking small and large businesses alike. No organization is entirely immune to a security breach. It is absolutely critical to take necessary steps towards better cybersecurity, and among the basic things that need attention are passwords. Hackers are finding newer means and ways to attack businesses, but weak passwords and lack of adequate measures certainly make things easy. If you are worried that some hacker will hack into systems and devices, follow below-mentioned 10 suggestions for better password protection.
- Change all default passwords. That one step can help in preventing security breaches. Both default passwords and usernames have to be changed right after installation.
- Ask employees to use strong passwords. A strong password needs to be long (at least 10 characters), must have special characters, uppercase & lowercase letters, and numbers.
- Use MFA. Multifactor Authentication is necessary for certain devices and accounts, such as IP video surveillance equipment and privilege account. For example, you could introduce a second level authentication using a security question.
- Consider encryption of passwords. End-to-end password encryption is yet another smart way of keeping hackers at bay.
- Never reuse passwords. If you have asked employees to change passwords periodically, make sure that they are never reusing ones that have been used before.
- Consider advanced authentication. Biometrics are being used for selected devices and accounts, which take password protection to the next level.
- Recommend a password management tool. It’s humanly impossible to remember a bunch of complex passwords on a daily basis, and your managers and teams need an effective password management tool.
- Keep backups. While these steps go a long way in preventing hacking attempts, it is still wise and better to take backups of valuable data, so that a breach doesn’t impact everything and corrective steps can be taken.
- Consider network segmentation. This basically refers to allocating resources into segments called subnetworks, so that compromise on one doesn’t impact others.
- Watch your networks. Hacking attempts can be prevented by securing office networks. Also, ensure that your employees are not using their accounts or accessing company resources on public Wi-Fi networks.
Proactive measures can go a long way in password protection, and each step counts. It is also necessary to get people involved within the organization and do create an incident response plan, so that any breach or theft of passwords can be reported immediately.
