Passwords are a major asset to all organizations, yet if they are left vulnerable they can easily fall into the wrong hands. Enterprise password management can assist businesses in keeping their passwords secure and confidential at all times.

Most people use the same exact password for all their many accounts including email accounts, online stores and bank accounts. This isn’t a smart thing to do, a blog post from Thycotic reveals. In essence, all a hacker must do is then figure out that single password, and will walk away with all the information you have. Within the enterprise, stolen identity is only one of the many high stakes risks a business can face by not fully protecting their passwords including giving these cyber thieves the ability to log into the organization’s infrastructure and receiving detailed payroll information, social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account information and more.

Most users change their passwords at their company every 60 days, so why do they neglect their personal accounts? According to Michael Millstein the author of this enlightening post, traditionally IT pros keep their passwords in an encrypted Excel file, use generic/default passwords, and do not change these passwords on a regular basis. Then wouldn’t it make sense for user-level policies to also be stored on privileged account passwords? These passwords are virtually important but tend not to be looked after to a large enough degree by IT departments. Millstein added, “If the passwords are the same across multiple devices and accounts, a hacker can view all the sensitive information on your network without breaking a sweat.”

Some companies think that all you need is a basic firewall to keep cyber attacks at bay. This is simply not true. “Once a hacker gets through that firewall he’ll head straight to your servers, databases and the other accounts containing sensitive information. Without strong internal password policies, or software to help manage passwords and rotate them to keep hackers guessing, your infrastructure is vulnerable," he stated.

To prevent these dangerous liaisons from occurring that potentially cause a business to fail, be sure to utilize use the same password regulations IT administrators make their end users adhere to.

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