It’s almost impossible to understate the importance of having and using strong, secure online passwords. As important as it is for consumers to heed this advice, it can be even more important for businesses to use and secure the passwords of their various accounts. As tools like Firesheep have shown, gaining access to an e-mail or Facebook account can be alarmingly simple.
Fortunately, there are tools and precautions companies can take that will help simplify the process of keeping passwords safe and protected.
Use unique passwords for different accounts
No matter how often we’ve been warned, the reality is that most of us use the same password or group of passwords for all of our major accounts. At first, this doesn’t seem too bad—especially if that password is a unique and long mix of numbers, letters and cases. The problem with using the same password or group of passwords, however, is that if one account is compromised, other accounts can follow.
This is especially true for users that associate an e-mail address with an account. When Gawker Media’s Web servers were breached last year, thousands of commenters had their usernames, passwords and e-mail addresses exposed. As a result, some of these users had their e-mail, Facebook and Twitter accounts compromised as well.