Proshred truck driver posed in front of Proshred'S shredding trucks
So far this year, the United States has fallen victim to 641 data breaches so far, totally over a stunning 175 million records exposed. In the state of Georgia and the City of Atlanta, data breaches are a growing concern and this year breaches have happened to many residents and a variety of different industries. To name a few, 785 employees has their personal information exposed, 3000 seniors were effected in a breach of private health information and 3.7 million Georgia residents fell victim to a data breach. Whether your Atlanta business is big or small, one way to help avoid a data breach from happening to you and your employees is choosing strong passwords for your computer systems. The most common passwords are not safe to use in the modern world and they will not protect the confidential information stored in your computers from data hackers. Too many passwords are too easy to guess for hackers; they normally include names of family members, pets, addresses and birthdays. Even more alarming is that many of the worst passwords that have been used include abc123, 111111, 12345, 123456, 1234567, 12345678,access and password.

To help protect your Atlanta business from a possible data breach, consider the following is choosing a strong password:

  • Make sure the password is at least eight characters long; longer passwords are harder to crack.
  • The password of your choice is different from other passwords you may use on other computer systems, such as a home computer
  • Use a variety of different characters, such as uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and keyboard symbols, like ^  @ & ! _ % ~ = / ?.

If you decide to go with things that are common in your life, such as names and addresses, for a password then ensure that you mix it with other characters. As an example, if your birthday is January 1 and you want to use it as a password, going with something like such as #ja$%nUA*_*R?y1 will make it stronger and much harder for a data hacker to crack.

While picking strong passwords for your computer systems is vital, to also help protect your sensitive information from other concerns like identity theft, hiring a professional document shredding provider is a step in the right direction. Proshred® offers a variety of services, such as on-going shredding, hard-drive destruction and one-time purges. Contact us today for more details at 1 (678) 580 – 1155    

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