The national foreclosure has meant thousands of additional people in the UK are staying at home to work rather than venturing to their offices. This slight increase also means that many companies may consider whether distributed working practices could be established on a much larger scale, with some leaders seeing the COVID19 pandemic as a testing ground to see if teams can effectively work together remotely. long-term. This required a change in corporate and employee behavior, which means that in many cases there are more remote devices connecting to corporate networks via VPN than ever before, and more employees using unsecured WiFi connections. . Aside from educating staff on processes or relying on innate technicalities, one of the keys to keeping your business truly secure at a time like this is ensuring that everyone in the organization uses strong passwords.
About the Author Tyler Moffitt, Security Analyst at Webroot Gone are the days when users could apply the same password to every account, from their online banking, Facebook, or even a working laptop. With hackers becoming more sophisticated than ever thanks to evolving technologies, companies need to take a proactive stance when it comes to training staff on what exactly is meant by a "strong password." This information is becoming increasingly vital at a time when security risks are increasing and crisis scams abound.
First, know what a weak looks like
The first step in creating a strong password is knowing what a weak password looks like. Weak passwords often include common words or phrases that are easy to guess (especially by someone who knows you), short, and easy to crack. Here are some examples of weak passwords and password features to avoid: • Although "password" and "1234" are easy to remember, these are two of the most common and hacked passwords. These are simple passwords that can not only be easily guessed by humans, but can also be easily identified by automated programs designed to hijack your system. • Using your first or last name, year of birth, birthday, or any other identifiable date is risky. This identifiable information is easily guessed, and if it can be easily guessed, it can be easily hacked. • A password that is too short makes you vulnerable to hacking. The longer the password, the harder a hacker or their cracking software has to work. This is crucial. Brute force tools like hashcat can split 15 characters in 5 hours with a hardware investment of around €4,000. Gone are the days when 8 characters is enough to protect against brute force. • Don't be obvious in your password codes and overrides. For example, the password "Ca € h" is not only too short, but the substitution of the dollar sign for the letter "s" is quite common and easy to guess.
Try to include a phrase in your password
A simple and clever way to design a memorable yet secure password is to use phrases. The length of this sentence is important because each character you add makes it much more difficult to crack with brute force tools. Be sure to include spaces in your password if the site allows it. Take the expression "snow white and the seven dwarfs." If no spaces are allowed, it can be changed to "SnowWhite & the7Dwarves". It's still easy to remember, but much harder to guess or crack.
Combine and customize passwords for specific sites
One of the most basic cyber hygiene practices is to refrain from using the same password for multiple sites or platforms. For many people, this can be difficult because they don't think they can remember all of their different password combinations. However, it can be useful to develop your own unique but consistent password style with only a few changes per login site. For example, take the password "Snow White and the Amazon of the Seven Dwarfs" (log in to Amazon). You can then adjust this format based on your other connections, creating an easy-to-remember password style while having a unique password for each of your platforms. Facebook would be: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Facebook" and so on.
Have fun with it
Today, most computer keyboards have between 101 and 105 different keys, giving you many possibilities to design unique password combinations using not only the letters, but also the many symbols and characters found. on the keyboard