The importance of multifactor authentication for your organization

Advice General CyberSecurity

You almost can't believe it, but it's true. The five most used passwords of 2022 were "password" (with nearly five million hits), "123456", "123456789", "guest", and "qwerty". Despite security experts indicating for a decade that the password is 'dead' as a standalone security measure, we still continue to use it. And that has consequences. A whopping 81% of all data breaches in 2022 were due to weak passwords. Fortunately, there are things you can do about it.

1. Use a strong password.

A first step is implementing a clear password policy in your organization. There are several criteria that a good password should meet. Our Security Engineer, Wouter Odeur, is happy to help you get started: "When choosing a password, it's best to go for a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters like (&!%$). A strong password consists of at least 14 characters. You can also opt for a short phrase combined with numbers and punctuation marks. And most importantly, make sure to use different passwords for each account. That way, if one password is hacked, it won't have any further impact on your other accounts."

2. Use a password manager.

Of course, it's not easy to remember all those different passwords, which is why people often use the same password for multiple accounts. But that's dangerous. There's a solution for that, says Wouter: "Because you need to create a different password for each account, the number of complex passwords adds up. A password manager ensures that you don't have to remember them all and that you can store them in a safe place. You can do this through Google, on your iPhone, but there are also other apps you can download to store your passwords."

3. Set up multifactor authentication as an extra layer of security

According to Microsoft, you can prevent 99.9% of cyber attacks on your account by using multifactor authentication (MFA), a security method that uses two or more factors to verify a user's identity. This makes it much more difficult for hackers to break into your account. Because even if they have your password, they still need to authenticate themselves in another way. And that's where things often go wrong.

Multifactor authentication can be done in various ways:

- You verify yourself using a PIN code that you receive on your phone via SMS or through an authentication app;

- You use a physical element of yourself to identify yourself, which can be a fingerprint, iris scan, or facial recognition.