How to prevent password mismanagement in a company?
Credentials play a fundamental role in business cybersecurity. If managed correctly, they can strengthen your business security. If mismanaged, they can lead to a costly cybercrime.
So, how to prevent password mismanagement in your company? How to protect your business from password-related data breaches?
What is password mismanagement ?
Password mismanagement happens when people fail to follow safe data management practices and make mistakes.
Usually, these mistakes are not uncommon or hard to predict. Often people make an error when it becomes too difficult to follow the right data management path. These errors happen in shortcuts.
As discussed in the 2022 Verizon report, 82% of all data breaches involved the human element.
Therefore, it is possible to prevent password mismanagement once you know what causes it.
What are the most common password mistakes?
Too weak passwords
Statistics suggest that the primary reason behind most data breaches is weak credentials. Accordingly, the company’s security is only as strong as its weakest password.
An easy-to-guess password is especially vulnerable to cyber threats like brute force attacks. Therefore, work accounts protected with poor credentials are at an increased risk.
Passwords like 123456 or password are the first ones any hacker will try to break into the account.
If this is the credential your employee uses, a hacker will succeed.
Too complex passwords without proper storage
While complex passwords fit under good password management practices, they only serve their purpose if stored correctly.
If an employee has only a few complex passwords, most likely, he will not experience any difficulties remembering them.
Yet, the reality suggests a somewhat different truth.
An average employee has not a few but around 100 passwords. Naturally, remembering dozens of unique passwords becomes impossible.
As a result, employees usually fall into a few traps: they start simplifying their passwords, reusing them or storing them somewhere unsafe (f.e., excel sheets or online notebooks).
And all these practices contribute to password mismanagement.
Reused passwords
Recycled or slightly modified passwords are among the biggest password mistakes.
If your employee uses one password to log into multiple accounts, he puts all those accounts at risk.
During a credential stuffing attack, hackers take already known (for instance, previously leaked) passwords and try them on other accounts. If a user reuses passwords, he unknowingly exposes many accounts to cyber criminals.
This happened even for Dropbox. In 2012, Dropbox experienced a massive data leak with over 68 million stolen accounts. The hackers used the password of one of Dropbox’s employees, which had been leaked earlier.
In this way, one compromised account can lead to uncontrolled data loss for multiple accounts.
How to prevent password mismanagement in your company?
Password mismanagement can quickly make any company a lucrative target for data theft. Therefore, it is critically important to eliminate password mismanagement practices and introduce correct management.
The easiest, most cost-effective, and most reliable option – present a password manager to your team.
A reliable team-focused password manager (like PassCamp) can effectively prevent password mismanagement in your company.
This tool provides secure data storage ( protected with the most effective encryption methods out there). This way, your employees can store complex credentials securely without remembering them.
The password manager automatically saves newly created passwords into the vault. Later, it fills in the login fields automatically. This way, an employee does not need to manually search for credentials or remember them.
As a rule of thumb, password managers eliminate password mismanagement – users start creating unique complex passwords and store them safely inside a secure vault.
Try out PassCamp today. With the right tool, it becomes easy to follow good cybersecurity habits.
