Plant the Seeds of Good Computer Habits

When it comes to technology best practices, password protection is the best place to start if you are concerned about the security of your data.  In your business, rule number one should be to only provide password protected access to systems and data to those individuals who truly need to see the data.  However, people tend to overlook the importance of not following password practices. With this in mind, make your employees aware of the following best practices: 

                Password “don’ts”

1. Don’t write passwords on sticky notes – doing so will make it easier for someone to steal tour passwords.
2. Don’t save passwords to your browser – web bowsers are terrible at protecting passwords and other sensitive information like your credit card numbers.
3. Don’t iterate your password (for example, PowerWalker1 to PowerWalker2) – Hackers have become far too intelligent and can crack iterated passwords in the blink of an eye.
4. Don’t use the same password across multiple accounts – cybercriminals will exploit as many of your accounts as they can get their hands on.
5. Don’t capitalize the first letter of your password to meet the “one capitalized letter” requirement – hackers are aware we like to capitalize the first letter to fulfill one of the requirements in password etiquette.
6. Don’t use “!” to conform with the symbol requirement – there are many other special characters you can use. Also, try to not always place special characters at the end of the password.

                Password “do’s”

1. Create long, phrase-based passwords that exchange letters for numbers and symbols – for instance, write “Honey, I shrunk the kids” as “h0ney1$hrunkth3k!d$”.
2. Change critical passwords every three months – as painful as it sounds, this is an effective practice.
3. Change less critical passwords every six months – the key is to determine the criticality of the password.
4. Use multifactor authentication – this is one of the best approaches to add layers of security.
5. Always use passwords that are longer than eight characters and include numbers, letters and symbols – do not make it easier on the hackers.
6. Use a password manager – this will relieve you from the burden of remembering a long list of passwords.

 If you have any questions, give us a call at (915)587-7902. We’ll be happy to assist.