Companies of all sizes have been hit by hackers, making their data vulnerable. A hack can be a big hit to your company's reputation because of the media coverage that comes with this negative event. It can also affect productivity and cost you a lot of money. You don't want to leave an opening so your data is accessible, so you need to make sure that every employee understands passport security and follows best practices.
Unfortunately, far too many companies do not do enough to keep their networks or proprietary data secure – especially in a proactive manner. To help improve workplace passport security in your organization, follow these four simple tip.:
Your entire team needs to understand WHY passport security is essential. Make sure team members understand that their password practices can affect the security of the entire company's network. Just recently, Dropbox came under fire because one employee's poor password practices (re-using a password) led to the theft of emails and passwords for more than 60 million Dropbox users. One person can really make a difference in this area because a hacker who gets access through one careless user can affect everyone in your organization and your customer base.
Set company computers to issue reminders when a password needs to be changed. Employees should change passwords every 30, 45, or 60 days and reminders should usually begin about five days before the deadline. This practice should be mandatory. Your employees will learn to make the adjustment. Also, their passwords shouldn’t be allowed to be too similar.
Employees should not be sharing their passwords and they should be aware that you do not know their password. Instead, the changes should go through the system and each individual employee should handle the password updates personally. Reinforce the fact that your IT staff (or anyone in the company) doesn’t have access to anyone else’s password.
Multi-factor authentication or multi-factor verification allows system access only after multiple separate pieces of information are obtained. For example, instead of just putting in a password, users will also be asked to input other data to verify their credentials before being allowed access to the system. This type of authentication can also be important when allowing access from off-site.
Following these four tips could help to ensure that better passport security practices are used at your organization. This, in turn, could help you to avoid a damaging data breach which could affect employees and customers. Educating your employees and making them realize the importance of data security will help your company as well because they won’t just ignore all of your practices.
You also need to make sure you have a good IT staff who understands network security and best practices for passwords. The staffing professionals at Technology Partners can help you to find the right candidates for every tech job in your organization. Give us a call today at 877-636-1331 or contact us online to find out more about how we can help.