Why poor password management can kill your business (and what you can do about it)
In December 2014, the consequences of inadequate safeguarding of business data became painfully obvious. The recent hacking of Sony Pictures saw the as of yet unidentified hackers obtain some 100 terabytes of sensitive data, including staff medical records, salary information and personal email communications, causing both financial damage and embarrassment.
Needless to say, you don’t have to be a global brand like Sony to be vulnerable to cyber attacks. But while there are plenty of great password security services out there for private users, many companies fail to identify and implement secure management systems for their business. This could prove a costly mistake.
How to make password management work for you
Lately we have seen a growing popularity of some decent – albeit not fool proof – services to assist private users with password management, some of the most popular ones on the market being LastPass and 1Password. While services like LastPass might serve you well in your personal life, they do not meet the needs of businesses. Partly because they were never meant to, but also because global password storage systems are frequently the targets of cyber attacks.
What businesses need are tailor made, individual password management services using single sign-on (SSO) systems and cloud technology. Not only are they safer, but the right password management system can also serve your business on a daily basis, by saving you both time and money.
- Shave minutes of the time each employer spends logging in to different systems every day. The more staff your business has, the more time you will save.
- Every day IT departments get an incredible number of password related enquiries. Using the right system could save your staff having to contact IT and, as a result, decrease the workload on this department.
- A password management system can help you achieve regulatory compliance by meeting the requirements of password safety within your industry.
- It can reduce the costs of employee turnover, as you don’t have to track down and change log-ins to individual systems and websites.
Network Overdrive are launching a new service
However, building a tailored system for your business can be very costly. Being unhappy with the services currently on the market, we decided to launch our own. We are happy to announce that Network Overdrive will be offering a new dedicated AaaS (Authentication as a service) in the New Year.
The new service will consist of three parts:
- 1. Password manager.
- 2. Multi-factor authentication using soft tokens (on smart phones) or hard token devices.
- 3. Single sign-on portal.
Stay tuned for more information on this in 2015!