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PASSWORDS 101

You can have the best firewalls and monitoring, but employees who get sloppy with passwords may be your greatest source of vulnerability. Here are our top tips to creating better passwords:

LENGTH TRUMPS COMPLEXITY

Using longer passwords or phrases rather than shorter more complex passwords is more secure. A longer password between 15-64 characters which is changed every 90 days is significantly more effective than an 8 character one changed every 30 days. The popular web comic XKCD compared the strength of a complex password ”Tr0ub4dor&3” and a long passphrase “correct horse battery staple”. They found that it took only 3 days to guess the password created in with special character substitutions, while the passphrase would take 550 years to crack.

KEEP IT IN YOUR HEAD

Although tempting, passwords should never be written down on post-it notes or notepads. Likewise, passwords should never be shared between colleagues. Keep them to yourself to minimise the risk.

LOOK TO USE A PASSWORD MANAGER

At B2 we use a password manager to store complex passwords like the one above. A password manager is a single sign on service, which store long character strings. That way colleagues do not have to stress about passwords. A password manager is a cost effective way to bolster your cyber security making it harder for any potential threats to get in.