NexTec posted on July 28, 2011 13:14
I shouldn’t be shocked, but I still am.
No, the surprise is not that a rabid team of reporters would hack into the phones of celebrities, politicians and victims to get a scoop. What shocks me (and shouldn’t) is the ease in which they gained access. There was no James Bond meets Sherlock Holmes type of code cracking. The reporters just took advantage of the fact that people don’t change their passwords – unless they’re forced to. Many of the people who were hacked were still using the phone’s factory default password settings. You would think that politicians and celebrities who vigilantly guard their privacy would know better. But apparently they don’t.
Your employees are probably no different. Given their preference, many employees would probably stick with admin (for admin) and password (for password), leaving your sensitive Microsoft Dynamics accounting and operational data vulnerable. You can’t assume that everyone has the same sensitivity to data security that you do. Don’t wait until it’s too late.
As the Microsoft Dynamics Administrator, the most important thing you can do to protect your data is to force employees to reset their passwords on a regular basis. It’s pretty simple. But if you haven’t done it before, you will soon learn that setting a password policy is easier than enforcing the policy.
It is a pain. Users will forget their usernames and passwords. You have a ton of other work. I know. I’ve been there. But really, there are no good excuses. You don’t want to be the next scapegoat, blamed for a company fiasco. So please, go create a secure password policy!