In the first in a new series of Technology Tips, DoorCo’s technology manager, David Rosser, is sharing some good practice ideas for a new year’s resolution that might even stick, and keep your IT secure at the same time.

As we head into the new year, many will be putting our New Year’s resolutions into place, maybe cutting down on excesses we indulged in over the festive season.

Some might even go as far as getting a membership for the gym. Speaking for myself, and maybe this is familiar to you too, my resolutions never seem to last very long. I always have a good excuse, and I’ll always do better next year.

This year I’d like to propose a different resolution, one that you will stick to – a renewed approach to cyber security. Working in IT I’ve seen too many ‘post-it note’ passwords stuck to screens and overheard discussions of how to update a password in the easiest and simplest way.

Good password security doesn’t have to be difficult, and I have some tips to make your new New Year’s resolution stick.

Passwords

It can be tedious being told to have complicated passwords and making sure they are all different, but it is important to protect your accounts and data.

The Institution of Engineering and Technology reported that at least a fifth of people use the same password for multiple accounts and 38% believed that replacing letters with numbers, e.g. pa55w0rd is more secure, but this isn’t the case.

One approach you can take is treating passwords as a pass phrase. A combination of a few words in a memorable phrase. The longer your password is the more complex it is to crack, for example 2025NewYear’sResolution would be very difficult to crack but is not difficult to remember.

If you need to use a lot of passwords for different accounts you may want to consider a password manager. These are tools that will generate complex passwords and securely store them for you so you don’t need to remember them.

As a team, we use Keeper (other options are available) to manage our passwords. It gives us the ability to make use of Single Sign On to secure access and securely share passwords within teams, when required, without having to write down or store in plain text elsewhere.

Multi-factor authentication

Another tip for securing your accounts is to enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) wherever possible. This is an extra step used when signing in and will require you to authenticate through an authentication app or a code sent via text message.

By using MFA, even if a malicious party was able to get your password, they wouldn’t be able to authenticate via the second step, meaning your account remains secure.

With these tips you’ll easily be able to take your cyber security resolution forward through the whole year, which would be a first for me. Maybe the gym can wait until next January?