How The Miller Group Enhanced This Firm’s Password Security
Maintaining strong and complex passwords may sound easy in theory, but most users opt for easy-to-remember passwords instead.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a great way to overcome the users’ resistance to maintaining strong passwords while ensuring adequate cybersecurity standards.
That’s why this marketing firm hired The Miller Group. They needed a reliable layer of security for their users’ logins, and MFA was the perfect solution.
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The Unfortunate Reality Of Password Security
Although passwords are the most direct way to access a user’s private information, most passwords today are simply not strong or complex.
Passwords protect email accounts, banking information, private documents, administrator rights, and more—and yet, users and businesses continue to make critical errors when choosing and protecting their passwords.
To be fair to users, there’s a lot to keep in mind when choosing a password:
Length and Complexity
Remember that the easier it is for you to remember a password, the easier it’ll be for a hacker to figure it out. That’s why short and simple passwords are so common – users worry about forgetting them, making them too easy to remember, which presents an easy target for hackers.
Numbers, Case, and Symbols
Another factor in the password’s complexity is whether or not it incorporates numbers, cases, and symbols. While it may be easier to remember a password that’s all lowercase letters, mixing in numbers, capitals, and symbols is essential to increase the complexity.
Personal Information
Many users assume that information specific to them will be more secure – thinking, for example, your birthday is one of 365 possible options in a calendar year, not to mention your birth year itself. The same methodology applies to your pet’s name, your mother’s maiden name, etc.
However, given the ubiquity of social media, it’s not difficult for hackers to research a target through Facebook, LinkedIn, and other sites to determine when they were born, information about their family, personal interests, etc.
Pattern and Sequences
Like the other common mistakes, many people use patterns as passwords to remember them better. Still, that makes the password easy to guess. “abc123”, or the first row of letters on the keyboard, “qwerty,” etc., are extremely easy for hackers to guess.
In the end, creating and using strong passwords can be frustrating—the more secure they are, the more difficult they are to remember. The more memorable they are, the greater their threat to the business.
How Did The Miller Group Help This Marketing Firm?
The Miller Group carefully planned and executed a project to enable MFA for this marketing firm’s environment. By implementing a robust MFA solution, we would enhance the security of their passwords and authentication.
The specific services in use by this client that are protected with MFA include:
- Local computer logins
- Connections to Office 365
- VPN connections
We used the industry-leading MFA solution Duo, which requires each user to add a device for secondary authentication (covering one or more of the following: modern smartphones for push approvals, time-based codes by text, time-based codes by phone call, or token devices).
Furthermore, their conference room computer was isolated on a guest network that included this marketing firm’s wireless network.
Enforcing the use of Duo MFA by requiring approval of the login through a cell phone or physical hardware key resulted in increased confidence that this marketing firm will stay safe from cybercriminals.
MFA: The Better Way To Approach Password Management
MFA is a superior way to keep your data more secure—after all, it blocks 99.9% of identity-based attacks.
MFA requires the user to utilize two methods to confirm that they are the rightful account owner. There are three categories of information that can be used in this process:
- Something you have: Includes a mobile phone, app, or generated code
- Something you know: A family member’s name, city of birth, pin, or phrase
- Something you are: Includes fingerprints and facial recognition
The Benefits Of MFA
Bring Your Own Device
In today’s modern business world, more and more employees prefer to do at least some of their work through their mobile devices, which can present a serious security risk. However, with an MFA solution, you can enroll new employee devices in minutes, given that there’s no need to install an endpoint agent.
Convenient Flexibility
A MFA solution won’t force you to apply the same security policies to every user in the company. Instead, you are given the capability to specify policies person by person or group by group.
How Does A Multi-Factor Authentication Solution Work?
- User logs into the session with primary credentials.
- The session host validates credentials with Active Directory.
- Then, it sends credential validation to the cloud via the login app.
- The MFA client sends its secondary authentication to the user. User approves.
- The MFA client sends approval back to the session host via the login app.
- The user accesses their session very securely.
Though MFA does make it harder for the account owner to access the account, it also makes it difficult for cyber thieves to learn your password. Their job becomes much tougher because they now need to do more than just hack your password. They’ll need personal information about the account owner.
With so many accounts being too easy to break into, hackers are more likely to just move on instead of trying to break through the multiple-factor authentication process.
The Miller Group Will Help Protect Your Data
If you’re unsure about how to implement an MFA solution, don’t try to handle it all on your own.
The Miller Group will help you evaluate your password practices and security measures to ensure you’re not taking on any unnecessary risks. We will guide you in implementing MFA for your entire staff, ensuring your data is properly protected, just like we did for this marketing firm.
Contact our team and arrange a consultation.
