In our last two articles, we talked about how to immediately recover from and prevent a cyber breach by identifying suspicious emails. In this next installment, we’re going to explore how you can protect your passwords to prevent breaches from occurring. To give yourself peace of mind and to protect your financial institution should an attack occur, equip your bank with a Cyber Liability Insurance program.
Passwords can be a headache for administrators and employees who waste ample time trying to figure them out. However, they serve a purpose, particularly to protect your confidential data and network, so they aren’t going away anytime soon. With that in mind, consider the following advice for creating and monitoring your passwords.
Make it user friendly.
To improve the employee experience with passwords try using consumer-oriented tools, such as a password strength meter, to tell employees the relative strength of their chosen password. Another idea is to add a knowledge-based question to leverage employee-specific data in order to add a layer of identity verification. For instance, this can include the employee’s hire date, badge number or manager’s name. Making this information available to help desk support staff can greatly assist in enhancing the verification process for resetting passwords, explains Security Magazine. Not only will this provide a strong password, it makes recovering it much more feasible when needed.
Salt your passwords.
Traditional encryption methods are no longer effective, which is why companies should turn to the salting technique.
Salting is the process by which encryption creates a unique value or “salt value” that is then used to hash the password. This way, passwords are stored in a more secure way and prevents hackers from accessing them, even if some employees have the same password.
Make it a team effort.
From executive management to interns, every single person must take ownership of network and password security. With everyone on board, it’s much more difficult for a cyber attacker to hack the network successfully.
About FGIB
Since 1983, Financial Guaranty Insurance Brokers has distinguished itself as a provider of Professional Liability, Cyber Liability, and Crime insurance products for financial entities. A BPL policy offers banks, their executives and employees coverage for alleged errors or omissions in professional services rendered to customers. Financial Guaranty Insurance Brokers (FGIB) can provide you with this policy and customize the coverages you require to address your operations and the services you offer. For more information about our products, we invite you to contact our experts today at (626) 793-3330.