Protecting Your 365 Account With Strong Passwords/MFA
For many of us, much of our world depends upon computer programs. Things like our schedules and things to do may be kept inside these programs and be ever-changing. For many, the programs that house these are those within the 365 products offered by Microsoft. This makes for an account that you will want to be sure is secure as possible. Some ways to do this are through the use of a strong password and the use of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).
What is considered a strong password?
The three key things to keep in mind when securing your account password are the length, characters included and the change frequency. For length, the longer the password, the more difficult it becomes to guess or even hack a password. We recommend a minimum length of 7 characters.
The second key is characters. If a password is only letters or only numbers, it becomes much simpler to figure out. The four types of characters that you should look to mix into passwords are capitalized and lower case letters, numbers as well as special characters like $#%*&!?. Combining these four areas make it much more difficult for someone to breach the account. Our recommendation is that at least 3 of these types of characters are in use.
Finally, how often the password changes is important. If it remains the same forever, it allows for unlimited time for a bad actor to attempt to gain entry by guessing a password. by switching your password regularly, that clock is routinely reset. A common recommendation for password changes is every four months or so.
What is MFA?
Similar to the above MFA is a way to keep your accounts safe, though this may be an even more secure method. When MFA is activated, a push notification will be sent to your phone when you login. This makes it so that even if a bad actor were able to obtain your password, they would also need your phone in order to gain access to the account. Many organizations have been implementing this recently, particularly with the recent shifts to business models that are based even further online.
If you are interested in implementing password policies or MFA on your systems, please feel free to call or email our offices to discuss.
We strive to look out for the best interest of our customers and their procurement in the IT venue. Be it hardware, software or service related, we want to guide you in the most effective manner possible.
