Does your organization use cloud-based products to share files? Are you sending files to 3rd party vendors and managing files internally? If you answered yes, then password-protected file sharing should be important to you.
Password-protected file sharing increases security around your sensitive folders and files. For example, if you’re a law firm, you don’t want your clients’ materials and content exposed to the world.
Before you use any file sharing service company-wide, make sure their password complexity requirements meet your needs.
What Password Complexity Requirements Should You Look For?
There’s a lot of file management and file sharing services out there. As an IT administrator, you should immediately find out how much control you’d have over password complexity for users.
If your company needs HIPAA or PCI compliance, any ability for administrators to control your file security without increasing liability is important. That’s why robust password controls are important—you can set the requirements as an IT administrator without needing to know employee passwords or sensitive information.
Creating Strong Password Requirements
To strengthen your password complexity across your organization, you may need to start from the ground up. This means doing a global reset on passwords if you feel they don’t meet your requirements.
Once you have a fresh slate, it’s important to set the minimum requirements. Password-protected file sharing tools should give you control over the minimum number of total characters required for user passwords. If you can’t control that, they shouldn’t be on your list if you want any kind of security.
Next, it’s important to add elements that would stop brute force hackers in their tracks. This means adding special character elements and numeric elements, as well as forcing mixed case.
Preventing someone from using their username in their password is also an obvious password complexity mechanism you should implement to use against hackers.
4 Questions IT Admins Should Ask File Sharing Companies:
- Can I stop brute force hackers?
- Can I generate random passwords and force them to reset upon login?
- Can I reset all my users’ passwords easily?
- Can I meet my company password complexity policy with your tool?
Password-protected file sharing is about common sense with regard to security. Yet, “security features” are often overlooked by file sharing companies who only care about the “sharing” functionality of their product. Thankfully, there are some products out there that put password-protected file sharing at a premium, and SmartFile is one of them.
SmartFile’s Password Protected File Sharing Solution
SmartFile’s password features enhance compliance and keep your data secure. Here are just some of the password protection features we offer for users:
- Set the Minimum # of Characters
- Set the Minimum # of Alpha Characters
- Set the Minimum # of Numeric Characters
- Set the Minimum # of Special Characters
- Create Random User Password & Reset Upon Login
- Auto Expiration Date Rules
- Password Re-usage Rules
- Mixed Case Rules
- Disable Username in Password
Try SmartFile’s free trial and see if this meets your password-protected file sharing requirements.