Password Management Best Practices
Data sharing can cause problems. Password managers can help prevent these problems. Here are some important password management best practices.
Meeting planners, producers, and their clients need to protect their data at all costs, yet they exchange confidential and sensitive accounts, files, and passwords on a regular basis with employees, partners, and vendors. With so many people in the mix, security is a concern. As an added complication, many people (and the organizations that employ them) lack a fundamental understanding of the risks they’re taking and of the serious need for password management best practices at the individual and the corporate level.
Password Management Best Practices
These days, password management best practices dictate that you have a different password for every site. However, it’s near impossible to remember so many passwords. According to the Pew Research Center, “Many security professionals recommend password management software as the best way to create and store complex passwords. But … the vast majority of Americans keep track of their passwords using much more traditional methods – specifically, by memorizing them or by writing them down on a piece of paper.”
It’s common enough to use simple passwords (e.g., birthdays, addresses, or your children’s names) or passwords that are easy to remember (e.g., password123 and abc123). Others use the same password for every site or write down passwords. None of these “solutions” is secure – simple passwords are easy for hackers to guess, and written notes can be discovered and used against you. And if you use the same password on multiple sites, a security breach on one site exposes all your logins.
Password managers like LastPass, RoboForm, Zoho Vault, Dashlane, and Keeper can eliminate all these problems. All you need to do is create one simple, highly secure password. Your job is to remember that one password; it’s your password manager’s job to remember all the rest of your passwords for you. Simply save a password once, and it’s instantly available on all your devices.
Tips for Creating a Master Password
You’ve probably been told to use both uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, symbols, and at least eight characters. This advice sounds great, except that a password like “Passw0rd123!” meets all of these criteria. This variation of “Password123” is easy to hack and could lead to a serious data breach.
Password management best practices call for a strong, unique master password. Never use your master password, or even a variation of it, for other accounts or apps. A simple strategy for creating a master password is to use a memorable passphrase, which is a long sequence of words and characters.
While you could use a line from a book, a song, or a movie, these days hackers have created databases of all these texts, along with all the most common passwords. Instead, create a 20-30-character, complex passphrase using a combination of words, phrases, and symbols that make sense to you. For example, MycatSammy’sbirthdayisoctober12! and Ireallylovedmyvacation2theBahamas.
Password Management Benefits to Your Organization
Once you save a password in LastPass, you’ll always have it when you need it. You’ll also be able to:
- Generate strong, unique passwords for every site using the built-in password generator, which creates long, randomized passwords that protect against hacking.
- Access securely encrypted information on any platform (Android, iPhone, laptop, desktop).
- Safely share digital records, passwords, and notes with employees, partners, and vendors.
- Make password sharing easy for your entire team while securing access to corporate data.
Secure Passwords Are a Must for Every Organization
These days, implementation of password management best practices isn’t optional – it’s critical. Create your account with one long, secure master password, then let your password manager do the rest.
Why Total Show Technology?
TST is the total show production solution for anyone who hosts, plans, manages, or produces events, meetings, and trade shows. We own the Pacific Southwest market and travel with our clients all across the country. Our clients have relied on us to deliver audio, video, lighting, equipment rental, and show production for conventions, corporate meetings and events, and trade shows since 1996.
Whether you’re looking for audio visual support or advanced event technologies that enable you to deliver your message effectively, we help your shows go off without a hitch and always make you look good. In an industry where almost anything can go wrong, we make sure everything goes right.
Let’s have a conversation! Call us at 702-897-8508, email us at sales@totalshowtech.com, or visit www.totalshowtech.com/contact.
