Is your office at risk of a serious security breach due to simple mistakes and unnecessary vulnerability? Chances are that you are. As security becomes more important to long term business success, it’s critical for businesses to get serious about these common security vulnerabilities. You might be surprised which of these mistakes is taking place in your office today.
Passwords on Sticky Notes
It’s challenging to keep track of a wide variety of different passwords as a user in the modern age. Many employees will turn to reminders of complicated corporate passwords that are different from their more familiar personal passwords. But you can be sure it’s not just them who will see a password left on a sticky note. If that little slip of paper gets lost, your entire business can be exposed.
Related Article: Key steps to increased password protection when managing sensitive data
Easy to Guess Passwords
Hacker bots are very, very good at looking through the dictionary to find the right combination of letters that a user would choose for their password. As most account users are thinking along very similar lines when creating their password initially, they are falling into a cybersecurity trap. The new best practice is to make a password that is both difficult to guess but easy to remember. An example of this is the use of a phrase rather than a word. To shorten up the password, but maintain the complexity, use the first letter or number of each word to create a seemingly random but easily recalled password.
Related Article: Is your company overlooking this data security gap?
Shared Passwords
The repeated use of passwords across multiple different accounts and the use of easily guessed passwords is still one of the top entry points for hackers to gain access to personal or sensitive information. If your employees are guilty of the common sin of using the same password for their corporate accounts as they do for their personal accounts, you are leaving your company exposed and vulnerable to the same level of security that their personal accounts support.
Take the Dropbox and LinkedIn hacks of recent years. These corporate attacks were facilitated because users were using the same password on their personal accounts as their professional ones. It’s not enough anymore to have just one strong password. Your employees need to be one step ahead of the bots and cybercriminals that are focusing 100% on how to gain access to your system.
Related Article: Are password managers like 1Password truly secure for your office?
Lack of Security Guidance
It’s so important to establish and enforce strong corporate security policies. Make sure your employees are changing their passwords often, are using different passwords for each of their accounts, and always logging off when leaving a device, even just for a moment because that’s all it takes for someone to steal or change a password. Use comprehensive security software that protects against keystroke loggers and other malware.
Have employees use their password only on secure devices, and not access the corporate network from unsecured Wi-Fi connections, or computers at an internet café or library. You can’t let the onus of corporate security fall on your employees alone. You must support them and teach them how to achieve greater security by setting the proper ground rules and infrastructure to keep everyone on track.
For more examples of how your team can be safer online, connect with the experts at Happy Faces Records Management.
