As much as you’d like to believe that your passwords are totally reliable, the reality is that passwords are less secure now than ever before. Across the web, hackers are using tools to crack passwords in a matter of seconds. From there, personal data, financial information, and other sensitive data are being compromised.
If you’re looking for a way to increase password security, one of the best things you can do is to conduct a password audit. This is something you can do on your own or as a company-wide practice to protect your data. Not sure where to start? We’ve got you covered.
The Importance of Password Audits
For starters, it’s important to understand what a password audit is, what it entails, and why this practice is so important. Specifically, a password audit refers to a practice where specialized software is used to “test” your passwords against a variety of different attacks. From there, you can be alerted as to which of your passwords may be more likely to be compromised versus which ones appear to be strong.
A password audit is a great way to see where you stand when it comes to password security. Many organizations regularly use password auditing tools to keep employees’ passwords as secure as possible. There are several email services that already offer this service, which alerts you to make a password more complicated or alternatively creates the password for you.
How to Conduct a Password Audit
The first step to conducting a password audit is to find a reliable password auditing tool, of which there are many available. LastPass and 1Password are two popular and reputable password management tools that make running audits quick and easy. Specifically, these platforms will notify you of any duplicate passwords where you may be using the same password for multiple accounts. Likewise, these auditing tools will alert you to any passwords that are considered “weak” or those that may have been exposed to a data breach.
By running a password audit on all of your accounts once a month, you can stay on top of your passwords and keep them as strong as possible.
Other Tips for Beefing Up Security
In addition to running a regular password audit, there are some other password management best practices you’ll want to keep in mind. For starters, make sure that you’re changing your passwords regularly. The longer you’ve stuck with the same password, the more vulnerable it becomes to data breaches and other security compromises.
You should also aim to use a different password for each of your accounts. This can be difficult, of course, because remembering dozens of different passwords is nearly impossible. This is where using reputable password management tools can make all the difference. With one of these tools, you can simply provide the password to one account to access all of your accounts online (even if they have different passwords).
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