8 Best Practices for Reducing the Risk of Password Attacks

Passwords to your employees’ and vendors’ accounts serve as gateways to your enterprise’s most sensitive information. Without proper password management, these accounts can fall prey to password attacks, impacting your business processes, finances, and reputation.

In this article, we’ll explore the most common types of password attacks in cybersecurity and outline eight password attack prevention best practices to safeguard your organization.

Password attacks: what you need to know

What is a password attack?

A password attack is a type of cyberattack in which a perpetrator tries to access a system or account by acquiring a user’s password illicitly. 

According to Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report, the use of stolen credentials is the top strategy used in data breaches, accounting for 24% of all cases.

Malicious actors can trick your employees into revealing their passwords or take advantage of negligent behavior to access your sensitive data, trade secrets, customers’ PII, etc.

By selling stolen data on the dark web or encrypting it and demanding ransom, cybercriminals achieve their objectives while inflicting severe damage on the targeted enterprise.

How can password attacks affect you?

If your enterprise falls victim to a password attack, it can significantly impact your processes, finances, and brand image. Let’s examine the common negative consequences of a password attack.

• Data breaches. Compromised passwords can give attackers access to sensitive corporate data, customer information, financial records, and intellectual property. 
• Operational disruptions. When corporate passwords get compromised, malicious actors can corrupt or encrypt critical data, lock out users, and bring down entire systems within the enterprise network, thus halting your business processes.
• Compliance issues. Password attacks that compromise sensitive data can lead to hefty fines and legal actions according to the GDPR, HIPAA, and other data protection standards, laws, and regulations.
• Reputational damage. A successful password attack on your enterprise could severely impact your brand’s reputation. Reports of data breaches can undermine customer trust, harm relationships with stakeholders, and result in missed business opportunities.
• Financial losses. Dealing with the aftermath of a password attack can consume significant time and resources for IT and security teams. Lost opportunities combined with regulatory fines and recovery costs can seriously impact your financial stability.

All password attacks aim to exploit security vulnerabilities and the human factor to gain access to user accounts. However, cybercriminals typically differ in their attack methods.

Types of password attacks

Understanding the various types of password attacks is crucial for effectively defending your enterprise.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the most common examples of password-based attacks.

Phishing

A phishing attack exploits human psychology to trick people into revealing their passwords to corporate accounts. Criminals disguise themselves as someone employees would trust, such as a bank representative, customer, colleague, executive, etc.

In most cases, attackers conduct password phishing attacks through email. However, they can also do so through text messages, phone calls, or QR codes.

Brute force attack

During brute force attacks, hackers use the trial and error method to check every possible password combination until they find the correct one. With specialized software, malicious actors combine characters in various ways, trying them against a target account.

Short, simple passwords can be cracked in minutes because the shorter the password, the fewer possible combinations there are. 

Password spraying

With password spraying attacks, hackers target a lot of accounts with a short selection of frequently used passwords. This technique is often effective because many people use poor passwords like “123456”, which is the most common password in the world, according to Nord Pass’s 2024 Research Insights.

Dictionary attacks

In dictionary attacks, malicious actors use a list of common words and phrases  (e.g., “password”, “letmein”, or “iloveyou”)  to guess a user’s password. Hackers create these lists by compiling common passwords from various sources, including dictionaries, leaked password databases, and public code repositories.

Credential stuffing

With credential stuffing, hackers obtain compromised passwords from various sources, such as previous data breaches and the dark web. They then use those credentials to gain access to other accounts, exploiting users’ tendency to reuse the same passwords across multiple platforms.

Keylogging

Keylogging is a type of cyberattack in which malicious actors secretly record users’ keystrokes to steal sensitive information. Typically, users are tricked into downloading keylogging software, thinking it is a legitimate program, through suspicious emails or shady websites. However, attackers can also exploit software vulnerabilities to install keyloggers onto users’ devices.

Once installed, keylogging software runs silently in the background, capturing every keystroke. This allows attackers to obtain sensitive information, such as passwords, credit card details, and other private data.

Man-in-the-middle attacks

These attacks occur when malicious actors intercept communication between two entities, such as a user and an online service. Using this method, they intercept the exchanged information and can even modify user sessions to redirect users to fake versions of trustworthy websites and steal credentials.

Man-in-the-middle attacks are often conducted via unprotected Wi-Fi networks or compromised routers. This type of attack is particularly dangerous because even if a password is strong, hackers can still exploit an account after infiltrating the communication channel.

Rainbow table attacks

A rainbow table attack occurs when cybercriminals attempt to crack password hashes. A hash is a method a computer uses to store passwords securely, transforming them into an encrypted format rather than saving them as plaintext. Rainbow tables store many precomputed hash values and their corresponding plain text passwords.

During such an attack, a malicious actor first exploits vulnerabilities or steals a database of password hashes from a computer to get the required hash record. Then, they use the code to search for a match in the rainbow table. Once they find a match, attackers can reverse engineer a password and use it to gain unauthorized access to the target account.

Recognizing various password attack methods is a good starting point for enhancing enterprise security. However, robust password management is the true must-have for protecting your enterprise.

Why is password management crucial for enterprises?

Passwords are the first line of defense for enterprise systems and data. This makes them a priority target for malicious actors looking to break through enterprise security for financial gain, espionage, or ideological reasons. 

Although password attacks are nothing new, the majority of users’ password hygiene is still poor. Even in the corporate environment, users often choose weak, easy-to-guess passwords and reuse them across multiple accounts, creating security vulnerabilities for the whole organization. In addition, they may resort to insecure practices like writing passwords down or storing them in text files.

At the same time, hackers’ techniques continue to evolve, especially with AI development. While it takes a human about two days to develop an effective phishing prompt, AI can achieve the same result in only 5 minutes, according to the X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2024 by IBM Security. 

That’s why organizations worldwide fall victim to password attacks. For instance, in September 2023, a successful vishing attack on MGM Resorts International shut down various systems, including slot machines and hotel key cards. The organization estimated it would be facing a one-time cost of $10 million and a negative impact of about $100 million on its adjusted property core profit.

Your enterprise must have a well-thought-out password management system to prevent similar scenarios.

Best practices for password management

In this section, we’ll explore the best practices for password attack prevention. We’ll reveal the most effective methods to securely manage passwords, minimize vulnerabilities, and fortify your enterprise security.

Establish password policies

Setting up robust password policies is the first step towards securing your enterprise from password attacks. Your information security policies must provide users with clear guidelines for creating and maintaining strong passwords. They serve as a framework to ensure that all users adhere to the latest security standards. 

We recommend including the following key elements in your enterprise’s password policies:

By including all these requirements in your policies, you’ll cover all the crucial aspects of the secure use of passwords in your enterprise.

Conduct regular cybersecurity training

Human error and negligence remain significant factors in password attacks on enterprises. According to Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report, a human element is involved in 68% of breaches. 

Regular cybersecurity training helps ensure that users in your enterprise fully understand password policies and why it’s critical to follow them. By learning about the tactics hackers use during password attacks, employees can more effectively identify and avoid potential threats.

Implement the principle of least privilege

The principle of least privilege is an approach that can help your enterprise minimize the risks of various cyber threats, including password attacks. This principle suggests that users are granted only the access rights necessary to perform their duties.

If user accounts are restricted in their permissions, the potential damage of password attacks on your enterprise is also limited.

Implement just-in-time privileged access management

Just-in-time privileged access management (JIT PAM) is built around the idea of granting users privileged access to specific systems and resources, only for a valid reason, and only for a limited time. It significantly reduces the window of opportunity for attackers to exploit compromised credentials. It also reduces the risk of users inadvertently leaving privileged accounts vulnerable to password attacks.

The ultimate goal of JIT PAM is to achieve zero standing privileges, which involves completely eliminating uninterrupted access rights of human and machine accounts in an enterprise.

Use multi-factor authentication

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) requires users to provide two or more verification factors to authenticate, making it much harder for an attacker to gain unauthorized access to the enterprise’s resources even if they have obtained a password. 

By requiring additional authentication factors, such as a one-time code sent to the user’s phone or a fingerprint scan, MFA adds an extra layer of security to passwords and can thus effectively stop password attacks on your enterprise.

Monitor user activity

Continuously monitor user activity within your enterprise to detect signs of a password attack. User activity monitoring enables your security teams to track how users behave with your various corporate accounts and systems and swiftly take action when something feels off. For instance, monitoring can help you detect repeated failed login attempts that may signify a brute force attack, logins from unusual locations, or attempts to log in outside of usual working hours.

By leveraging user activity monitoring solutions, your enterprise can quickly respond to potential password attacks. Such tools often provide automated incident response capabilities, such as blocking compromised accounts to isolate threats.

Go passwordless

Passwordless authentication is an emerging cybersecurity trend that aims to eliminate the reliance on traditional passwords. It involves replacing passwords with more secure authentication methods, such as biometrics (fingerprint, facial recognition) or hardware tokens (security keys).

Cracking passwordless authentication methods is much more complex than cracking passwords. Thus, by implementing passwordless authentication, your enterprise can remove passwords as the primary attack vector and significantly reduce the risk of cybersecurity threats.

Deploy a password management solution

If you cannot entirely switch to passwordless authentication yet, implementing a password management solution can boost and streamline your efforts to tighten password security within your enterprise. Password management solutions provide centralized storage, encryption, vaulting, control of access to credentials, and secure sharing mechanisms. 

With a password management software solution, IT administrators can automate the enforcement of password policies, minimizing the risks of human error and optimizing workloads.

Mitigating the risks of password attacks with Syteca

Syteca is a cybersecurity platform that helps enterprises of various sizes manage the security of their inside perimeter through advanced user activity monitoring and privileged access management capabilities. 

Here’s what Syteca’s workforce password management functionality offers for efficient credential protection against password attacks.

• The password vault enables your enterprise to keep credentials encrypted in a secure storage location and grant users access to corporate resources without revealing passwords. 
• With password rotation, you can automatically rotate passwords at specified times to reduce the effectiveness of credential stuffing attacks launched against your enterprise. 
• Password checkout can help you secure credentials by limiting who can access a single secret to one user at a time. 
• The users within your enterprise can securely share business credentials to enable effective collaboration without putting corporate accounts and resources at risk.
• Manage who can use, share, and edit passwords with role-based access to secrets.
• Leverage one-time passwords, time-based access restrictions, and manual access approvals to implement the just-in-time approach to access management.

For overall cybersecurity, Syteca PAM gives you full control over users’ access to your enterprise’s endpoints and servers, while Syteca UAM helps you quickly notice suspicious account activity that may point to password attacks or other cyber threats.

Additionally, Syteca’s account discovery (AD) functionality can help you identify all privileged accounts that may have been previously overlooked or abandoned. With AD, you can reduce the chance of privileged account misuse going unnoticed until the critical damage is already done.

Syteca also offers functionality for vendor monitoring, incident response, and user activity reporting.

Conclusion

Password attacks can have severe consequences for enterprises that lack safeguards to repel such threats. Effective password management serves as a critical line of defense, helping enterprises to protect sensitive data and meet compliance requirements. By implementing these best practices for password management, businesses can significantly reduce their vulnerability to password-related threats.

Your organization can make the process of securing passwords faster and smoother with password management solutions like Syteca. By leveraging Syteca’s tools for managing access, overseeing user activity, responding to potential threats, and investigating security incidents, you can implement comprehensive cybersecurity measures in your enterprise and secure its most critical areas.