Security is important for any company, some companies spend thousands or even bigger companies can spend millions just to make sure their data is secure. Through all of this security and financial investment, there is one flaw that remains and continues to be the most utilized flaw by hackers. Passwords; passwords are the most direct key to a company’s data. That puts a lot of a company’s data, perhaps even finances at the mercy of good password management. Hackers today are finding it much easier to obtain an employee’s password and walk through the front door of your company’s security, compared to using any other form of hacking. It doesn’t even necessarily take a “hacker” to do this. Anyone with the right information is capable of making that breach. Is your company spending thousands to make sure your data is secure, only to find out a negligent employee had left the keys for a hacker to pick up?
We use passwords for everything, think of all of the different passwords you have for the multiple accounts you need to do business. That can either be a pretty long list or even a short list, in the end both have a problem. If your list of passwords is short, you are more than likely using the same password for multiple accounts, a big mistake we’re all guilty of. There’s a pretty clear danger to this. If a hacker manages to get ahold of that password, they could have access to other accounts, putting even more information at risk. If it’s a long list, that just means you have a lot of passwords to keep track of, more than likely needing to be written down somewhere. Even that is frowned upon as being risky, but undeniably much safer than using the same password for all of your accounts. What can businesses and companies do to bring more security to their employee’s passwords? Obviously, the best way to secure employee passwords is to inform the employees of the risks that come along with using passwords incorrectly or in a careless manner. Educating your employees is always the best option for security, but guaranteeing security can go much further than that. The best choice for businesses and companies is to use password managers. This provides their employees with a safe place to store all of their login credentials and safely review them later. Or they could use SSO extensions, eliminating the need to login all the time and instead just login once.
There are many tools out there for businesses and companies to utilize and improve their security. The fact that poor password management is one of the leading causes of data leaks is a disappointing statistic to analyze. Before your business or company spends thousands on more advanced security options, start with the biggest problem and make sure employee passwords are secure and used with caution.