3 Unique Password Tips To Increase The Security Of Your IoT Devices
The recent few years have seen a tremendous increase in the number of IoT devices in use. A single user keeps more than 3-4 IoT devices – like a smartphone, a tablet, and a laptop. Clearly, a single family of 4 turns out to be using at least 15-16 IoT devices. That being said, the number of IoT devices in a company – even a small startup – is exponentially high. With so many devices available on the web, unethical hackers usually hunt down even the smallest loopholes to hack into a system forcefully. And, then, beings the pit of information stealing and ransom. Clearly, if users are smart and they pay attention to securing their devices with a strong backdoor password, hackers will think twice before investing their time into hacking something that’s heavily guarded.
If you’re someone who’s still using a default backdoor password or someone trying to create a strong password and learn some productive password hygiene habits, then the following guide about password management to reduce security risk is just what you need.
- Make It Long and Unique
The minimum length of a decent password is 8 characters. It becomes more competent when the length is between 12-20 characters.
Next comes the quality of the characters used. According to a report published by the NCSC, some silly character combinations that are extremely hackable despite the length are:
- 123456
- password
- 1111111
- 123abc
- abc123
Clearly, the quality and complexity of characters are important too. Therefore, when you create a password for IoT devices, make sure it contains uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Only then the password becomes strong.
- Complicate Simple Words
Unique characters are already strong by themselves. If you complicate them further, the password becomes very unique. Some of the simple ways to do so are listed below.
- The word ‘Dog’ becomes 4O7, do7, d157, and so on.
- The word ‘Cat’ becomes 3@t, c@20, and so on.
- Keep It Exclusive
Sharing is not caring when it comes to password protection. You must limit authentication access to the concerned people only. When in a company, ensure that;
- All employees have a different username and a unique password.
- Employees have restricted authentication permission to access information. For example, the HR department doesn’t need to know what’s going on with the finance department. So, limit the password access accordingly.
- An exclusive password is brand new, unused, and non-repeated. In other words, the backdoor password of an IoT device should be something you have never used before and it shouldn’t be shared with any other device/account.
