Cybersecurity and data integrity are both very pressing issues at the moment. Businesses must deploy advanced security and monitoring systems to keep hackers out. Surprisingly, in spite of all the firewalls and protective measures you put in place with the help of IT support in Austin, data breaches can happen through very simplistic methods. If they are able to access the passwords for your network, your employee emails, or other important parts of your business computing system, a data breach could be imminent. Strong passwords and password management should be a major part of your cybersecurity efforts.
Common Passwords Used
Over the years, various surveys have been conducted to learn more about how people choose passwords. These surveys have uncovered some slightly worrying trends in the password space. Several passwords appear to be used by large numbers of people across the board. This could be for email accounts, network passwords, banking passwords, and the list goes on. What is also very worrying is that many people use the same easily guessed password for all or several of their personal and work accounts.
Some of the top-scoring passwords include defaults and popular options such as 123456, password, 12345678, 12345, 111111, sunshine, qwerty, and iloveyou. While these passwords may be easy to remember and fun, they defeat the purpose of a password. There are many ways for hackers to try to access a business network or a private account, and if they can guess what the password is from the list of the most common options, their work is half done. The need for strong passwords is something that cannot be overlooked.
Recommended Password Management Practices
Password management is important in cybersecurity. IT support providers in Austin can assist with different methods and mechanisms to enforce your password management strategy. There are a number of things you can do, and these include:
- Security awareness and training – Educating employees about the need to select strong passwords can help them understand how their passwords affect the security of the business and of their personal information.
- Enforce the need for strong passwords – Education is one thing but making it mandatory for passwords to be more complex can help. You can make sure that all passwords on your network require alphanumeric characters as well as special characters.
- Routine password changes – Even a strong password should be changed once in a while.
To learn more about password management, contact us at Contigo Technology. We are the local expert in IT support in Austin.