Passwords have been the traditional way to secure access to private digital portals. And with a long password composed of upper-case letters, lower-case letters, symbols and numbers we sometimes feel secure. As a business manager you can control, maybe even mandate, that your employees use a long password.
I use a 14-character password so I’m safe. Hive Systems, a cybersecurity company, estimates it will take 1 million years to crack a 14-character password with that combination of letters, symbols, and numbers. So of course, this is sufficient for my digital security, right? Wrong. That’s only the first step.
Can you control where employees keep that password? Is it in their top desk drawer, under the keyboard, or posted in public view next to their workstation? I was in an office recently and posted on the person’s bulletin board was their password!! A good reminder why passwords alone are not sufficient for cyber defense.
Ask your carrier partners to join ID Federation to help you improve your agency’s cyber security with operational efficiency. Yes, you can use a single authentication from your management system to connect to carrier agent portals without using a secondary ID/password/MFA process.
Alvito Vaz is executive director of ID Federation. He is a long-time participant in AUGIE and has held business and technology leadership roles at Progressive and Travelers. He can be reached at alvito@idfederation.com.
