A recent article from the small business advice and information service ‘is4profit’ offered some very useful tips when choosing passwords for the various serves we need to keep secure. Check out below to see where you password policy fits in.
- do you use easy ones eg,’password’, ‘admin’ or even leave them blank? A good password is a word or phrase that is unusual and, of course, something that is relevant to you.
- do you consider extending the password to a passphrase? The author of the original article suggested a simple song line, eg
- the long and winding road
- the pass phrase needs to have a mix of numbers and/or characters, eg
- 1he2ong3nd4inding5oad or
- !he_ong_nd$inding%oad
It is very important to have a policy on passwords which of course depends on the level of responsibility of the user.
Lastly, it is good policy to change password regularly. Computer systems will sometimes force this at 60 days.
On average 55 vulnerabilities are identified daily.
What can I do?
Review your organisations priorities and ask ‘can we afford a breach?’. What do I do during an incident? Who do I involve? When do I involve the ICO?
If you’re unable to answers these questions, you need help from the experts.
