Posted on: November 21, 2017
You walk into the office on a Monday morning ready to fire up your computer and get to work. As soon as the system boots up, though, you receive the dreaded prompt: It’s time to update your password. How can this be happening again? It seems like you’re being asked to change your password constantly, and it’s getting harder to come up with new, secure login credentials that you can also remember. So, what gives?
If you’re feeling the frustration of being required to frequently update your work passwords, your employees are feeling it, too. Unfortunately, workplace passwords can be quite vulnerable and, consequently, advanced security measures are necessary in order to protect your enterprise’s sensitive information. Because this is such a common issue in American businesses today, we’re dedicating this post to exploring the problems that employees have with password protection, along with some smart ways to maintain security without compromising on convenience.
Password Update Required
First, let’s talk about why your system insists that you and your team switch up your passwords so frequently. If a password is private, it should never need to be updated at all, right? Unfortunately, the short answer to this question is no. People will very infrequently elect to come up with strong, highly secure passwords on their own. Why? Because they want something that’s going to be easy to remember. The problem with this concept is that, the easier it is for an individual to remember their password, the more likely it is that someone else will guess it. Of course, there are also problems with employees sharing their login credentials with one another, or leaving a written form of their password laying around their desks. To counter these types of issues, many businesses now require their employees to change their passwords on a regular basis and demand that these passwords feature specific combinations of uppercase and lowercase letters, as well as numbers and/or symbols.
Finding a Better Solution
Even when your employees understand why they are being asked to change their passwords so often, they will still feel some frustration. After all, it may feel like as soon as they get used to typing in one set of credentials, they are being required to come up with a whole new login. As a business owner, you may feel stuck because, while you want your team to be happy and efficient, you can’t very well compromise the security of your organization. This is where modern-day solutions can come into play.
We’re already seeing a growing number of individuals and corporations taking advantage of two-factor authentication (2FA). With 2FA, a second layer of security is required in addition to a password. For example, Google sends a unique PIN code to a user’s phone once a password has been submitted. This ensures that, even if a password has been guessed or is known by an unauthorized person, they will not be able to access the account without access to the true user’s phone. When executed properly, 2FA can minimize the need to change and update passwords while still protecting your business.
Fingerprint identification and biometrics are also making their way into the workplace. While many people are already using fingerprint scanning (and facial recognition for those on the latest iPhone) to access their smartphones and tablets, Microsoft also recently launched a smart keyboard with fingerprint ID. Voice recognition and other biometric scanning devices will also likely become a staple in the working world in just a matter of years. These are security solutions that cannot be hacked, thus acting as the intersection of convenience and security.
Although passwords are still important, their use is evolving, and we believe there may be a time in the not-so-distant future when they have been completely replaced by more convenient methods.
Interested in learning more about making your office’s security more convenient? Talk to the experts at Uncommon Solutions today.
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