Here's a Quick Guide to Safeguarding Credentials

 

Safeguarding your authentication credentials is your best defense towards preventing your identity from falling into wrong hands. A recent report from Nordpass disclosed that people still use easy-to-remember passwords which however can also be hacked with very little effort. More than 2 million people use very simple passwords for example: ‘1234567’, notably, it won't take more than a second to break. 

People use passwords to gain access to an organization's resources and for recreational purposes as well, however, if the protection of passwords is taken lightly, one might end up falling into the hands of unscrupulous cybercriminals. Password stealing is easier than most of you think as hackers have multiple tools at their disposal, here are the ways by which one can ensure the prevention of the same. 

1 Minimum password length and complexity: Longer passwords with alphanumeric and special characters are considerably harder for hackers to break. For example letters, numbers, and special characters, “while it has been seen that few passwords are very secure against brute-force attacks, but the goal is here to increase entropy to protect password without making overly complicated passwords. 

According to the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), password with less than 10 characters can be hacked very easily. However, the question that arises is what length is considered secure but not too long? According to OWASP 160-character passwords considered to be a reasonable length. 

2 Multi-factor authentication (MFA): You must have seen many online shopping apps have started asking for extra authentication to verify your identity, more than just a username/email and password. For example, code on your phone, face or fingerprint scan etc. However, for big IT companies, it is very essential to use multi-factor authentication such as behavioral biometrics, building device reputational controls, IP tracking, and challenge-response protocols into their systems. 

3 Password managers for employees: It can be easy to go way for the companies if companies start having a password manager. This is a very easy and productive way that can ensure whether employees are using complex passwords or not. 

4 “Zero Trust” Security model:  This Network security model implies trusting no one, not even known users or devices without verifying or validating. This security model has been introduced by an analyst at Forrester Research. Although the theory employed is not entirely new, this security model has gained prominence nowadays in digital transformation and the effects can be easily seen on business network security architecture.

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