What Is Password Security?
As a very important element in cyber security, password security is the first line of defense to defend against network attackers and safeguard personal and organizational information. Protecting passwords is the key to password security. Policies, processes, and technologies that make identity authentication and passwords more secure are collectively called password security.
Why Do We Need Password Security?
Password security is of great importance. When logging in to the system or an application, a user needs to enter the user name and password for identity authentication. If the password is not properly protected and is stolen by attackers, and the system does not have other authentication modes or enough protection, the system will be completely exposed to attackers. In this case, confidential and sensitive information will be stolen, leading to information leakage.
- Personal password theft: Attackers can directly steal money from users or steal their identities. Identity theft may further result in financial losses.
- Enterprise password theft: Attackers can log in to the Telnet server, FTP server, and database server. After successful logins, the attackers can steal or tamper with sensitive data and important files on the servers, compromising enterprise system security. Alternatively, the servers are attacked and damaged, in some cases making websites, applications, or other services unavailable. This brings economic losses to enterprises.
Attackers stealing the password to log in to the server
Which Passwords Are Vulnerable?
Weak passwords, reused passwords, and cleartext passwords are more vulnerable to being cracked.
- Weak passwords: Such passwords are too simple, such as a phone number, date of birth, family member name, or pet name. Alternatively, the passwords are too short, such as consisting of only digits, which can be easily guessed or cracked within a short period of time.
- Reused passwords: The same password is used to log in to different websites so that hackers can use the password of a single account to obtain the access permissions of all the user's accounts.
- Cleartext passwords: During password storage and transmission, cleartext passwords are not encrypted, and so can be easily obtained.
How to Implement Password Protection and Password Security?
As the core technologies and basic support for ensuring network and information security, password security and password protection are the most effective, reliable, and economical means to solving network and information security issues.
For Individuals: Improving Password Security
- Increase the password length and complexity.
A password should consist of digits, uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and special characters. With longer passwords, the time to crack the passwords increases exponentially. Once the password length exceeds a certain length, brute-force cracking is ineffective.
- Use different passwords for different accounts.
Using the same password for email, bank, and social media accounts leaves you more vulnerable to identity theft. The abbreviation of the website can be used as the suffix of the passwords. In this way, you have a unique password that is not easy to forget for each website.
- Do not use dictionary words, only digits, adjacent letters on the keyboard, or repeated character strings.
For example, do not use passwords such as password, 12345678, asdfg, aaaa, and 123abc.
- Do not use names, unclassified personal information (such as phone numbers and birth dates), family member names, or pet names as passwords. This is because when we click the Forgot Password link on some websites, the system sometimes asks you to answer a series of questions. The answers can usually be found in our social media profile, making the accounts easier to be cracked.
- Periodically change passwords.
For System: Developing Password Security Design
The following aspects should be considered during system security design:
- Lockout policy: The account is locked for a period of time after the number of consecutive password attempts exceeds the configured limit.
- Verification code: Before logging in to the system, users are required to complete simple tasks, which are easy for users but cannot be completed by tools used for brute-force cracking. Typical examples include CAPTCHA code and SMS message.
- Limit on password complexity: Users are forced to set long and complex passwords and change passwords periodically.
- Two-factor authentication: Users are authenticated based on two authentication factors, such as password, ID card number, security token, fingerprint, facial recognition, and geographic information.
- Identity authentication based on digital certificates: As the security passport or ID card on the network, the digital certificate prevents communication data from being tampered with during transmission, improving system security.
- Secure password storage and transmission mode: Do not use cleartext passwords or store passwords in plain text format during password storage or transmission. Use secure encryption algorithms to encrypt and decrypt passwords.
- Author: Gao Tingting
- Updated on: 2024-09-14
- Views: 999
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