Every IT team prays for the day that people everywhere possess perfect passwords, but as it stands right now, many people don’t know all of the properties that make up a password you can be proud of, so today we’re listing out the prime password practices.
Use Unique Passwords
Everyone’s heard it: Don’t reuse account passwords. But do you know why?
Data breaches happen all of the time even with top-of-the-line cybersecurity, and some of those may include your account passwords, and if those compromised passwords are used for other accounts like your bank or email for example, then cybercriminals can use that password to access other accounts using the same credentials. If there’s no other protections like MFA, then that account is theirs to play with.
Use Multi-Factor Authentication
It can be a little annoying to verify logins with one more step, but as a second line of defense, MFA is really a small price to pay. This is especially true for business or financial accounts, as in the event of an account compromise, you will be alerted once someone tries to access your account from a new device or location. This will signal to you that your passwords needs to be updated or even to have your account temporarily locked down.
You should also be aware of MFA fatigue attacks! Bad actors can spam MFA authentication requests hoping that victims will concede, authorize the login, and allow the scammer to have access to the user’s account. Stay vigilant!
Password Complexity Counts
Fact of the matter is that “P4!~sS80rD” is harder to guess than “MyPassword1”, but even “MyPassword1” is better than just “password” which goes to show that even a little complexity can go a long way. Any detail that can prevent another party from guessing your password can keep your credentials much safer.
Use phrases
So maybe you don’t want a bunch of gibberish as your password because you know you’re going to forget, well, phrases carry a lot of weight too! Phrases are another way to keep people from guessing your password right off the bat and can be easier to remember too.
Make your passwords catchy, unique, and with the required symbols or capital letters and your password game will be that much better.
And a password Manager
So GreenTech, now that I have all of these unique complex passwords, how am I supposed to remember them? Get a secure password manager! Secure password managers