Your first line of defense starts at your login credentials. Some of the largest companies still suffer from improving their password strategy and Mail Chimp is just one of them!
With over 360 employees, MailChimp needed a secure way to share sensitive information. Sharing passwords on email simply wasn't cutting it! At the same time, it was becoming harder to maintain secure passwords that needed to be shared with a team. As the engineering team grew, it quickly became too difficult to maintain strong protection while enabling everyone to have easy access to the latest credentials.
MailChimp looked for a password protection solution, one that supported all in-house operating systems as well as providing a way to manage work and personal credentials seamlessly. These needs led MailChimp to implement LastPass Enterprise—a comprehensive password manager that saves users’ passwords and logs in on behalf of the user on password-protected websites, with secure access from every computer and mobile device.
With this case study in mind, it's time to consider your current organization's efforts to protect data. Check out these few tips to ensure you are on the path of maintaining security.
1. Avoid names places and dictionary words. Mix it up. Use variation of capitalization, numbers and punctuation.
2. Take a sentence and turn it into a password, replacing certain characters. For example, W?ow?imp::ohth3r = "Where oh where is my pear? Oh, there."
3. Make the passwords at least 8 characters long.
4. Use a password manager. LastPass or RoboForm lets you create unique and random passwords for each site. However, you only need one password to login to the program to access all your individual passwords. High security and easy to use if you don't want to risk creating your own.
5. Make sure your devices and browsers are secure when logging in.
6. Change passwords periodically - especially when employees enter and leave the company.
7. Write a tip sheet of all your clues in order to recall passwords!