In 2013, Intel made up a new holiday called World Password Day that occurs on the first Thursday of May. So today is World Password Day!
In honor of the day, we are sharing 4 useful password tips from Kraft Kennedy CIO, Marcus Bluestein:
- Do not reuse any username/password combinations on any sites. For example, if your personal email is example@gmail.com and you use that for accessing Netflix with the password “Ex@mpl3P@ssw0rd“, do not use that combination anywhere else. If you do, and that combination is exposed in any way, you will have multiple sites exposed.
- Use MFA whenever possible. Multi-Factor authentication is your best defense against compromised credentials as it requires you to have physical access to something (your phone). There are many different types of MFA these days, but the best ones “push” an acknowledgment to an application on your phone. This is better than SMS texting you a code as your phone can be spoofed and the code intercepted.
- Longer passwords are the best passwords. At Kraft Kennedy, we require a 20-character password. That sounds terrible I know, but we have set up our system in a way that the typical user only has to type that long password a couple of times a year at most. As a trade-off, we don’t expire passwords unless there is a compromise.
- When you have to change your password, come up with a new unique one, not your old password with a new character or number at the end.
The team at Kraft Kennedy is here for any additional questions, please reach out.
Stay safe!