Newsflash! You are not as safe as you think.

Passwords can be cracked. It’s pretty much every month nowadays that we hear about a new large-scale data breach, the leaking of personal content, or the hacking of major company’s servers. What’s really surprising is that many of these infiltrations could have been entirely avoided by these ‘victims of attack’ if they had taken a few specific steps to generate unique and secure passwords.

According to a 2015 report by technology journalist Carly Okyle, 90% of employee passwords are crack-able within 6 hours. That’s right, 90%.

Why is this happening? Well, one of the biggest reasons is that 65% of people use the same password for all of their web accounts.

It might sound inconsequential at times, but such lack of foresight often comes with a hefty price. It typically costs $200,000 on average for a small business to fix issues post-breach. And this figure has gone up to an astounding $170M for a single company looking to recover from a large data breach.

Where Users Go Wrong

When you look at how many of the passwords are stored, it’s not too surprising to understand why these passwords are exposed. 47% of users surveyed by Okyle maintain a spreadsheet to store passwords. 32% rely on memory, 31% use another form of electronic storage, and 27% write their password on paper.

Taking into account the number of casualties caused by these simple lapses of judgement, don’t you think it’s important to understand what constitutes a strong password policy?

Creating a Strong Password

A strong password policy includes the following:

• At least 8 characters
• Should not contain personal information
• Must be unique from previously used passwords
• Should not contain any word spelled completely
• One special character
• One number
• One upper case letter

While this policy will go a long way in ensuring that your password is secure, it’s important to note that nothing is ever impenetrable. Hackers use brute force tools that are trained to make acute password guesses based on common patterns and characters.

Leverage Multiple Security Factors

It’s important to combine the usefulness of a strong password with other security enhancements to maximize the confidentiality of your information. Other safety measures include the use of bio-metrics, two-factor authentication requiring a security question and answer or an authentication text or app code, and the ability to restrict excessive login attempts.

Security is a top priority for us at Vault Rooms and our focus is to provide our clients with state-of-the-art features that allow them to exercise complete control over their data room. With virtual data rooms being used in so many different and new ways, our clients’ security needs have also become more varied. We offer password management features within each account that allow an admin to establish password policies for optimal security protection. Whatever your security needs are, at Vault Rooms, we have a customized solution that perfectly fits your requirements.

To learn more about our virtual data rooms, get started here: www.vaultrooms.com.