Enterprise password management is something that quite a lot of companies are taking for granted. They are fully aware of password security threats, but they still don’t take the right steps for making sure that their passwords are secure and, thus, their crucial and sensitive information safe in their systems.
What most business owners and employees do is use very weak passwords, and they even reuse them many times, without even thinking about how vulnerable they make their companies. Why don’t both small companies and enterprises make their password security one of the top priorities? It is usually because they are more afraid of forgetting their passwords than they are afraid of potential hackers.
Nevertheless, hackers are always lurking behind the corner and you never know when they are going to strike. That is why you should make sure that your enterprise password management is top-notch, that is, develop a good password management strategy and strengthen your passwords, ensuring that no potential hacker could ever find their way through and compromise your company.
With that in mind, take a look at the essential steps that you need to take in order to manage your passwords effectively and always keep them safe and secure.
Password Managers as the Best Solutions for Enterprise Password Management
The best solution for effective enterprise password management is a good password manager. It’s not some guy telling you how to manage your passwords, but actually a software application or online service that stores all your passwords in an encrypted database and keeps them secure at all times. As such, they completely eliminate potential password security risks and, of course, help you have a peace of mind.
What most good and reliable password managers include is Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication. It is a great enterprise password management practice, as it allows you to use a single username and password to gain access to many connected systems. A lot of people find SSO perfect, because they don’t need to remember a lot of different usernames and passwords, so they are not stressed and frustrated about forgetting logins for their important accounts.
You certainly know that having one and the same login credentials for multiple systems puts all of them at risk. If someone gains access to one of your accounts, they gain access to each and every one of them.
However, with a good password manager, although you do have one set of login credentials for accessing all the other IDs and passwords, you have the option of enabling automatic password change, so that potential hackers can never gain access to your accounts if they do manage to somehow crack your encrypted password.
Password managers provide you with a lot of other useful features and benefits, so make sure you find a reliable one that will fit your business needs and keep all of your systems absolutely safe from any potential security risks.
Long + Complex = Strong Passwords
In order to create strong passwords, you need to make sure that they consist of at least 8 characters, but I highly recommend that you make it at least 12 characters. These characters need to be a combination of both lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols, so that they can be tough, if not impossible, to crack.
What does it mean to have a complex password? A complex password is not something like “M@yTheForceBeWithU”, even though it is long and contains “@” instead of “a”, since it still contains dictionary words, not to mention that various pieces of software that hackers use can see through your strategy of replacing letters with symbols.
A strong password would be, for instance, “M@yTh3F0Rc3B3W1thU135!”. It contains a lot of numbers and some special characters, which would make it impossible to crack. It may be a bit difficult to remember such passwords, especially when there are a lot of them, but if you use a password manager, not only will it generate strong passwords for you, but it will also remember them for you. All you need to do is remember one master password for accessing all your accounts.
Frequent Password Change for Effective Enterprise Password Management
Having a password manager, together with really strong passwords, will definitely make your accounts and systems safe and secure. However, changing your passwords on a regular basis will provide you with even higher security.
This is especially important if a hacker does somehow crack your master password, because a password manager can change all your other passwords and prevent the hacker from accessing your accounts. It can take about a month or even quite longer for someone to crack very strong passwords, which is exactly why changing them frequently will keep them secure and safeguard your systems.
However, you should never reuse your passwords because, if anyone manages to breach one of your systems, they will definitely try and use that particular password to access your other systems. This is again where a password manager comes into play, since it can generate strong passwords for you, as already discussed. Most importantly, it can automate the process, so you don’t have to worry about remembering to change your passwords.
Implementing Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) or Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Both 2FA and MFA provide you with an extra layer of security, so that a single point of failure can never take place and compromise your systems. Implementing one of those methods of computer access control means that, beside your master password for accessing all your accounts, you need to provide additional pieces of evidence to that particular authentication mechanism.
Those include security questions, such as “What’s your mother’s maiden name?” and “What’s your first pet’s name?”. It is absolutely crucial that you don’t provide correct answers, but rather think of something completely unrelated, such as “Gr33kG00D3$$7519” as your mother’s maiden name, for instance. No one would be able to guess that you used “Greek goddess” for her name, especially because of all the numbers and symbols that you used.
Enterprise password management is definitely not a rocket science, as you can certainly see. If you want to safeguard all the accounts across your organization, then utilizing a good password manager is your way to go, but remember to follow all the other aforementioned tips, so that you can make sure that your enterprise password management is really top-notch and completely uncompromised.
