Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 16 | Page 20

LATEST INTELLIGENCE PASSWORD SECURITY BEST PRACTICES FOR BUSINESS PRESENTED BY Download whitepaper here Password security standards and policies for business Implementing a password security policy – A two-step process Organisations spend millions of dollars on cybersecurity defences and consultants. Beyond traditional tools like firewalls, anti-virus and system information and event management (SIEM), it is easy to get caught up in sophisticated threat detection using Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), user behaviour and analytics. All of these tools have their place and are very valuable; however, one problem looms large: The first step in virtually every cybersecurity framework is to take an inventory of your assets and then determine the risk of losing each of those assets. Passwords are frequently the only thing protecting confidential business plans, intellectual property, communications, network access, employee census information and customer data. Due to human error, negligence and simple lack of knowledge, passwords are the weakest link in security. Attacking those issues head on will provide maximum return on investment. 20 INTELLIGENTCIO The second step is to implement policies according to the risk levels assigned to those assets. The most critical part of these policies is access control. Given that passwords will be an integral part of any access control policy, password security policies must be put into place. An effective password security policy entails making sure employees create strong passwords, do not reuse them, store passwords on authorised company devices and implement 2FA. Using a password manager to store passwords for all applications is the only way this can currently be accomplished. www.intelligentcio.com