Don’t Let Your Social Media Accounts Get Hacked

Password security is extremely important in protecting both account access, and your company’s reputation. While most hacks target websites, your organizations social media accounts present an attractive target for hackers. Don’t be fooled by thinking otherwise

Put Procedures In Place For Handling Company Passwords

Simply having the right policies and procedures can go a long way in protecting your business from hacks and compromised accounts. You should set clear rules for how company login credentials are handled (who has access, restrictions, rules, etc).

One important thing to remember is that there are plenty of solutions that allow accounts to be managed without having password access. In cases where multiple employees access company social media accounts, you should invest in a social media management dashboard. There are a lot of options, but the most notable are Sprout Social or Hootsuite. The added benefit of this is it makes brand monitoring streamlined and simple – making it easier for you to respond to customers in real-time.

These tools allow users to be assigned a unique login, and all of their activity will be accounted for. Another strong benefit of using tools like this is that there is no need to share the password. They will be able to post to social media and interact with followers and customers from the software dashboard. The less people that know company passwords, the better.

Managing Your Passwords At The Management Level

Of course at the end of the day, regardless of who has access at what, chances are you have a ton of passwords to manage. This can present a problem to larger business (or firms with many accounts).

There are potential risks when managing a large amount of access data. Here are the two scenarios most most people in this position face:

• For convenience, you use one password for all of your accounts. This exponentially increases the damage that could be done should your password become compromised. Think about it. Most hackers rely on patterns and behavior. Most people use the same password. This truth presents an opportunity for cyber thieves, and an impediment for businesses.
• Forgetting your passwords because you cannot remember them all. While you may be more secure from hackers, it does you no good if you’re the one who cannot log in.

Here is how to solve both of these problems with one good solution: use a password manager.

Password managers can be implemented using browser extensions, software or USB drives. Roboform and PassPack are both encrypted solutions to storing passwords, each with its own unique set of features. They allow you to add users and store all of your passwords encrypted. Some solutions even have browser extensions that allow for quick login when accessing sites. No extensive computer/server modifications are necessary, making them easy to install.

There are more solutions than the ones mentioned. You should definitely do the research and explore a solution that will work best within your company.

Tips For Creating Secure Passwords

Although password managers may be convenient users should recognize that they should still use the program responsibly and set up secure passwords that are not easy to guess. Passwords should never simply be a single word. The most secure passwords use a combination of alpha-numeric characters – with caps and special characters to boot.

Hacker’s have software like keyloggers or password generators that can detect common keystrokes on a network in order to steal your passwords. In order to make it harder for keystrokes to detect passwords different passwords should be used for every single account. That way if one account is breached it will not put all your accounts at risk.

Although choosing several different passwords makes management harder to remember, your password management software will save all these keyphrases for you and your employees. In addition to storing multiple passwords the software will also encrypt the data for you so that it is not easy for outsiders to retrieve. When an employee needs a password to access an account they can do so using a special thumbdrive application, browser application, or smart card application as mentioned before.

Source from :http://blog.rivalhost.com/business-password-management-tips/