Passwords

Make sure staff do not leave their usernames and passwords on post-it notes on the side of their screen (or in the back page of their notebook!).

If your staff use portable devices (laptops, tablet and phones) which have access to either your work system or e-mail then make sure that they have the password or pin code lock on that device enabled.

Don’t use the same password for everything.  Try to use complicated passwords such as the name of your favourite film or lyrics from a song.  Passwords should be something easy for you to remember but hard for a hacker to guess.  Brute force password crackers are readily available on the internet…it doesn’t take a mathematician to work out that a computer program could try every single combination of an 8 letter password quicker than it would to crack a 20+ character phrase based password that contains numbers, capitals and special characters.  

Consider using a password manager.  This is a secure app that stores your credentials and can sync them across multiple devices.

NEVER use “password” as a password.

Don’t tell anyone else your password.