In the Information Age when all of our personal data is stored online, it is more important than ever to have a robust password policy, as this offers the first line of defense to any possible data breach within your organisation.

It remains a critical, and ever-evolving challenge to protect your organization’s data, and operations from destructive forces such as unauthorized users, cyberattacks, and data breaches, are constantly looking to hack accounts that remain vulnerable through poor cyber security. As Director and IT Cyber Security expert Andrew Mathieson from AAFCPAs explains, the first level of security from any such attack is the implementation of a strong password policy to protect your firm.

However, balancing risk and user-friendliness remains challenging, with 55% of people relying on their memory to manage passwords, according to helpnetsecurity.com. Furthermore, many people keep hard-copy lists of their passwords, which is far from ideal!

AAFCPAs have some great tips for strong password management, and explain that to be effective, password management goes beyond password strength, with one of the important factors in protecting data, is regular education and updates for employees.

In addition, AAFCPAs advise their clients to encourage the use of passphrases and set the maximum password field length at 20-64 characters as one way to combat the data hackers.

For this, and more of their great strong password policy recommendations you can read the full article here.