With the ever-increasing rise of Cyber-attacks, it is more important than ever to ensure you are doing all you can to adequately secure your IT systems and data.
Despite Bill Gates predicting the death of the password in 2004, the password is still very much alive.
The password is still your front line of defence, but unfortunately it is often the weakest. According to Microsoft they receive 921 password attacks every second—nearly doubling in frequency over the past 12 months.
Password Problems
Firstly, for a password to be as secure as possible it should be complex, which means at least 12 characters long and ideally be a set of random characters including upper and lower case, numbers, and special characters. A password such as !fcTXi4@i-bc although very secure is also very difficult to remember.
Secondly, each system accessed should use different passwords. Otherwise, if a user account is breached, other related accounts are often easily breached as well.
Thirdly, because of the multitude of passwords users have to remember, they are often stored insecurely in unprotected documents or notebooks, or worse still, written down on post-it notes and stuck to the screen!
Unfortunately, the reality is passwords are hard to remember and keep track of, so users often choose weak passwords; combinations of dictionary words and numbers that are easy to remember but also easily breached. And due to the multitude of services a user may be accessing, passwords are often re-used.
%
of data breaches can be traced back to weak, shared, or reused credentials.
%
of employees share passwords with co-workers to access information.
What is a Password Manager
A Password Manager is an application that creates complex passwords and securely stores user credentials for multiple services. It overcomes the password problems outlined above, as the user only has one complex master password to remember which unlocks the password manager, all other passwords are created and stored in the Password Manager application. For example, the following is a 24-character randomly generated password which the user does not need to remember but is much harder to breach:
YGfga3.ALCgBrXn!rZ9i9xuz
Using a Password Manager
A good password manager eliminates the trade-off between security & productivity. It should work across multiple platforms and support multiple browsers for easy access to login credentials and passwords across all devices.
Engage IT partner with 1Password, which provides all the above and more:
Password managers like 1Password remove the friction of logging into sites manually.
Rather than hunting down that post-It note you jotted your password down on – or worse, reusing the same password across multiple services – 1Password fills in that information for you.
When you sign up for a new service, 1Password generates a strong, unique password, automatically fills in the relevant fields, and then saves it to your 1Password vault:
The next time you log in to that site, you don’t have to remember your password, or even know it. 1Password logs you in automatically:
And it’s not just login credentials. 1Password can autofill payment card information and store sensitive documents and information on bank accounts, licenses etc.
Organising & Sharing Passwords
Login credentials and secure information can be customised with additional custom fields and organised into multiple vaults for easy access.
Where shared passwords are unavoidable i.e. an online service account that is used by multiple staff, these can be stored in a shared vault for secure access by those staff.
If you need to share a password with someone outside of your organisation, this can be done via a secure email link from within 1password.
Improving Security & Productivity
Using a password manager like 1Password greatly improves security by creating strong passwords and storing them securely. It also improves productivity; no longer are you hunting around for a password or re-setting it because you have forgotten it. 1Password has all your passwords at your fingertips and you only need to remember one password to unlock it. It syncs across multiple devices so you can access your passwords on your PC, tablet or phone and it integrates with device security such a fingerprint/face recognition.
If you would like help to improve your password security and management, contact us today to see how we can help.
