No matter what you use your computer for, passwords are essential to keeping your information protected. Using a secure password for your own personal devices is highly advised in any everyday situation, but when you are at the workplace, either as a standard worker or the manager of a company, the use of the best possible security is critical. Selecting a secure password for yourself is more complicated than you might think, as there are multiple facets to choosing the right password and the right security measures for it. This article will serve as a guide for how to choose the right password and will inform you on the right techniques for improving your security measures at your company.
Other Methods of Keeping Your Accounts Secure
Before you learn how to choose a proper password, understand that there is more to security than just that alone. When you are at work, your computer login information is likely just a small breach away from getting hacked and costing your company invaluable data. This is why just choosing a safe password is only the beginning of keeping your data safe. Using security measures like multi-factor authentication (MFA) will ensure that hackers will have to do more than just get your password in order to bypass your login screen.
MFA requires more than one form of identification to be provided in order for access to the account to be granted. This means that even if a potential hacker passes one of these hurdles, the odds of the next factors also being compromised are low. Using this security measure will keep your account more secure from hackers and malicious infiltration. Even the most complex, secure passwords can be bypassed if you are not careful, so when dealing with highly sensitive information at your workplace, use other security measures such as MFA. With this in mind, you can now think about what kind of passwords to choose for your login information.
Choosing a Secure Password
It goes without saying these days that a single word with no numbers or symbols no longer will suffice as a password. If you are dealing with sensitive information like work data, or even if you are using your own personal devices at home, a more complex password than this is mandatory. To start, a strong password should be longer than ten characters and contain multiple symbols, numbers, and variations of capitalization.
If you do want to use a word or a phrase as your password, ensure that it cannot be easily identified as a word on first glance. This means you can use a sentence with all vowels removed and some letters replaced with numbers, for instance. Another method would be to type a sentence but replace the characters with the keys next to them. Just lowercase letters will not do, though, as you should remember to use capital letters, punctuation, and numbers.
Remembering Your Passwords
A fatal mistake one can make is to use the same password for every account. While this may be tempting to do as it keeps you from forgetting your login information, all it will take is one slip-up for your information both at home and at work to be compromised. However, remembering multiple different passwords can be challenging, so there are ways to do so. Consider using a password manager, which will keep track of all your passwords. Of course, set an extremely secure password for this. Also consider writing passwords down on a physical piece of paper as opposed to keeping them in text files on your computer. If you do this, make sure to keep this paper safe and hidden.
By setting a secure password and taking other security measures, you can make your life at home and at your job easier. Your company will be able to rest easily knowing you have done your part to keep them safe.