While organisations continue to make security a priority, an important part of that effort involves educating and empowering general users about best practices. Consider some of these statistics from the Yubico 2019 State of Password and Security Authentication Security Behaviours Report:
2 out of 3 respondents share passwords with colleagues
51% of participants said they reuse passwords across personal and business accounts
57% said they did not change their passwords after experiencing a phishing attempt
To bring change to an enterprise, security and IT teams must educate employees about best practices. With regard to password management, one of the easiest ways to encourage good password hygiene is to deploy a password management solution across your workplace. Here are some best practices to adopt.
1. Use a password management solution
Throughout the day most people visit many different sites that require passwords. Memorising many unique and sufficiently strong passwords (or passphrases) is virtually impossible. A password manager simplifies password use across different sites to keep users more secure. There are a number of solid password managers out there. Prioritise those that work across platforms and offer services for individuals for free or at a very low cost. Most password manager capabilities have also expanded over the years.
2. Choose a tool that you can easily deploy across your organisation
Password managers need to be easy to use for every level of user – from beginner to advanced. When considering a large or distributed employee base, the applications should be intuitive and easy to deploy. For example, whether you choose Bitwarden Cloud or deploy your own self-hosted instance, getting Bitwarden up and running is easy. And Bitwarden Directory Connector works with today’s most widely used directory services such as Azure, Active Directory, Google, Okta and others, to keep your Bitwarden users in sync with your teams and employees.
3. Only change passwords when you may have been compromised
The days of changing your password every three months are over. You should now only change them if you think you’ve been compromised. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) doesn’t recommend that users change passwords frequently. This actually leads to behaviour that may result in weaker passwords over time. You can determine if a password has been compromised by referencing tangible evidence, such as credit card fraud, or using a tool (like your password manager) that can tell if your password was exposed in a breach.
4. Use strong, unique passwords
Using strong, unique passwords for every service you use online helps minimise the impact of data breaches. A strong password doesn’t necessarily mean just adding special characters or numbers to a common word or name; it means increasing the password’s entropy, or randomness. One easy tactic for creating a strong password is to use a passphrase. A passphrase combines seemingly unrelated words or phrases that are easy for the user to remember but would otherwise be hard for an attacker to guess. Passphrases have a high degree of entropy while also being easy to remember.
5. Enable two-factor authentication whenever possible
With two-factor authentication (2FA) becoming more common across consumer and business websites, a good password manager will include ways to expand on this function. Using 2FA increases the security of your account by requiring you to enter another token in addition to supplying your master password. Even if someone were to discover your master password, they could not log in to your password manager without access to the additional token. If you’d like to get started with a password manager, you can sign up for a free Bitwarden account here.