It is World Password Day on Thursday 6 May. Corey Nachreiner, CTO at WatchGuard Technologies offers expert advice on passwords in the modern age.
“World Password Day has served as an annual reminder that we all need to practice better password security for nearly a decade. And yet, 80% of breaches began with brute force attacks, or lost or stolen credentials last year. Attackers add millions of new usernames and passwords every day to the billions already available on the dark web. This has been the trend for years now, so at a certain point we have to ask if daily headlines on the latest security breaches and hacks aren’t enough of a cue to practice good password hygiene, is there much value in World Password Day?
Yes, it’s a helpful prompt to use best practices like changing passwords for your accounts regularly, choosing strong passwords or passphrases with at least 16 characters, using a unique password for every account, and leveraging password managers to keep track of them all. But these password security policies should be basic table stakes at every organization by now and should be required and reinforced all year long.
I believe that a “World MFA Day” would be a more powerful and effective observance when it comes to strengthening corporate and individual security. Authentication is the cornerstone of good security, and multi-factor authentication means users must provide at least one additional token on top of their password to log into an account. These authentication tokens are typically something you are (biometric fingerprint or facial scans), something you have (like a hardware key or mobile phone) and something you know (like a password). MFA allows you to ensure that even if an attacker gains access to one of these tokens, like a user password, they’ll be unable to log in without the second (and sometimes third) authentication token. It’s an absolute no-brainer when it comes to addressing the widespread and persistent issues around poor password security and should be a primary focus for both businesses and individual users. So, let’s make World MFA Day a reality in 2021!”
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