Worried about hacking risks? Don’t miss these password protection tips!

Small businesses often take cybersecurity for granted. The aftermath of a security incident, or something like data theft, involves more than just financial losses. Yes, your company will lose money & profits, but damage to reputation and cost of damage control can be huge. It seems that cybercriminals can hack into anything, and often weak passwords and poor password management steps are to blame. In this post, we bring password protection tips that are worth following.

  1. Start by understanding the meaning of “strong passwords”. Strong passwords are long, at least 10 characters or more, should not have personal information, and must have numbers, uppercase & lowercase letters, and special characters. Make sure that employees are aware of what it takes to create a strong password.
  2. Rely on a password manager. Unfortunately, many executives still save critical passwords on paper or on spreadsheets, which are super easy to access. Instead, a password management tool can be really handy. There are numerous safe and reliable password managers that can be considered.
  3. Think of lockout feature. What happens when someone tries a brute-force attack on an account? If the hacker is smart, they may be able to hack the system, unless you use the lockout feature. With this feature, it is possible to lock out an account, if someone use a wrong password for more than a few specified times.
  4. Use multifactor authentication. This might be an absolute necessity for privilege account users. Multifactor authentication basically adds a second or third layer of security to an account or network, which could be use of biometric details, or a second or third question.
  5. Change default passwords. All default usernames and passwords must be changed immediately. This is critical because hackers often use these details as a backdoor entry into systems, and networked devices. Replace default details as soon as product has been deployed and ready to use.

Finally, think of network segmentation and use of firewalls. Placing networked devices behind firewalls is a basic cybersecurity measure, while network segmentation further comes in handy for dividing the entire network into subnetworks, so that compromise on one doesn’t cause damage or issues in others.

There is no straight way of preventing a security breach, but being proactive about cybersecurity does go a long way. Do your homework about basic cybersecurity measures that can be taken otherwise to strengthen enterprise security effectively across different departments and IT environments.