Maintaining Network Security: The Importance of Password Hygienics

We’ve all heard the adage that a good password is a key to both personal and business networking success when it comes to ensuring the online security that we have come to expect. With developing security technologies, like the innovation of fingerprint scanners, multi-factor authentication, and facial recognition, this wide-spread piece of advice can often become easy to overlook. The problem with this is that cyber threats are often targeting what is often seen as the weakest link; your password.

Managing Strong, Unique Passwords

Because of this, strong, unique passwords are the first barrier of defense against a potential threat or attack. However, how do you know what is both strong and unique? Moreover, how can anyone possibly keep track of all these varying passwords? Well, the Interlink Group Web Development & Networking Teams have devised some simple strategies to help you with this web security conundrum.

The first line of advice to anyone struggling to maintain the network and web security that they expect is to use a password manager. There are a plethora of different password managers out there to both provide unique passwords for every account that you maintain, as well as securely store that information in an accessible area for your use. This accessibility may sound like a scary prospect, but with the use of encryption and a strong password for login to your password manager, you will find that these tools can often become your best online security friend. We often recommend the use of LastPass for both personal and professionally deployed success.

Network Monitoring Defense

The second, and possibly most important, piece of advice that Interlink Group offers is to have network monitoring in place. This monitoring is executed in a variety of ways. For personal protection, it is important to have anti-virus and anti-malware installed on all devices that support these features. Interlink’s professional Network Security Team recommends the use of Bitdefender as both a strong line of defense and an excellent monitoring system for personal use.

Business network protection is often considerably more complex than an individual user’s needs. Proactive use of monitoring software will usually be managed by a trained team of IT experts, such as Interlink Group. Beyond monitoring, we recommend for business operations utilizing tools such as integrated security on each machine, disaster recovery services, endpoint, security, and cloud protected services. To find out more about protection beyond a strong password within the business world head to the Interlink Group Network Security page.

Password management and network security are easy to overlook, despite their growing importance. Thomas F. Duffy from the Center for Internet Security understands this problem, stating:

“Cybersecurity experts continually identify the use of strong, unique passwords as one of their top recommendations. However, this is also one of the least commonly followed recommendations because unless you know the tricks, it’s difficult to remember strong, unique passwords for every login and website.”

These issues are not easy to overcome, but if a bit of time is dedicated to ensuring your online security and the right tools are used, you can enjoy the online freedom that you want without having to worry about the many threats that lurk in the darker corners of the online world.