Many businesses have servers, email systems, backup systems, network routers, administrator accounts and so on. All of these require passwords. In some cases, companies have more of these ’super-passwords’ than they do employees.
Because they are the keys to the kingdom – imagine what would happen if a criminal had direct access to your email server or a competitor could access your file server – these passwords are especially important.
A recent survey by Cyber-Ark Software, an IT security company, found that while most individual passwords are updated:
- 13 percent of router passwords are never changed
- 21 percent of local workstation administrator passwords are never changed
- 13 percent of server passwords are never changed
Get Safe Online has detailed advice about choosing strong passwords and we recommend choosing new, strong passwords for any internet-connected device or piece of software. Never use the default, out-of-the-box setting. In addition, we have detailed advice for small businesses, including this article on controlling access to sensitive data.
