Top 5 Tips to Keep Your Password Secure
PRIVIT takes the privacy of your information very seriously. Our platform, which is built on patented technology and serves as the basis for all of our products, uses advanced military grade encryption and access control lists ensuring your information is only shared with authorized personnel. You can read more detail about our security here.
However, the first component of keeping your information secure continues to be your password. Your password serves as the primary line of defense to protect yourself online. Keeping a secure password is critical to keeping non-authorized personnel away from your private information. The following are our top 5 tips for keeping a secure password.
1) Change your password regularly
The more important the information you are protecting the more frequently you should change your password to ensure your security. We recommend changing your password every 6 months or so. More information on how to change your password can be found here.
2) Scan your computer for viruses regularly
Malicious individuals commonly use keyloggers, a program that records your keystrokes and sends them remotely to the person who wrote the virus, to steal passwords and gain unauthorized access to accounts. Running a virus scanner regularly can help protect your computer from key loggers and other annoying viruses that would harm and your computer. We recommend running a virus scanner around once a week. Most scanners will let you designate a day and time at which you would like them to automatically run. This allows you to set the virus scanner to run when it is convenient for you (we typically run virus scanners while we sleep) Many virus scanning programs are available for free online if you do not already have one.
3) Do not use weak passwords
A longer and more random password is always going to be more secure, and we encourage our users to go above and beyond our complexity requirements to keep their password safe. You should generally avoid using personal information, name; birthdate; pets name; etc., or full words or phrases as part of your password. Always make sure you can remember your password though, you should not write it down.
PRIVIT requires any password for our platform to meet the following requirements:
- At least 8 characters long
- Contain at least 1 letter
- Contain at least 1 number
4) Do not reuse passwords
We don’t recommend using the same password for multiple websites. Doing so could compromise its security, if someone were to get their hands on your password they would then have access to all of your accounts (potentially including your email, social media, and bank accounts). Using the same password repeatedly also makes it easier for keyloggers to correctly guess your password.
5) Do not share your password with anyone
This tip goes for accidental and intentional sharing. Your password should be complex enough that it is hard to guess but simple enough you can remember it, without writing it down and risking someone else seeing it.
When it comes to the PRIVIT solutions, there should not be a reason where anyone other than you needs to know your password. Remember each person on your PRIVIT account can be granted individual login access to their individual profile if needed. You should also not send your password out over an email, PRIVIT uses advanced encryption methods ensuring your information is secure while it is transmitted; however, your email provider probably does not go to this level to make sure your content is secure. In addition, you do not know and cannot control what the recipient of the email will do with your password once they have it. You can rest assured, a PRIVIT associate will never ask you for your password under any circumstances.
