Cybersecurity is one of the greatest issues of our generation.
With so much of our lives online, we are only as safe as our data: our Instagram accounts, Lyft profiles, and Google searches. And at the end of the day, our passwords are the only barrier between us and the cyber criminals who want to monetize our information.
Darren Guccione, CEO & co-founder of Keeper Security (John Rosin/Technori)
But, 60 percent of people use the same password on multiple websites. I’m as guilty of this as the next guy; I basically use the same four passwords across my top 50 visited sites.
Darren Guccione has created a super simple app to help solve a very complex problem. Darren is co-founder and CEO of Keeper Security, which protects business and personal passwords.
“We have a fiduciary responsibility to safeguard and protect information against a breach and a public disclosure,” says Darren. “That’s what other business leaders need to understand.”
What can businesses and individuals alike do to keep their data safe? Darren lays it out.
Cybersecurity = password security
If you think you’re not affected by cybersecurity breaches, think again. The monetization of stolen login credentials on the dark web is a booming industry of epic proportions.
“Cyber criminals are making billions of dollars,” says Darren. “It’s not even millions anymore. It’s in the tens of billions. It’ll move into the trillions.”
Frightening, I know. But Darren boils it down: “Over 80 percent of all cyber breaches are a result of weak password security issues.”
So while cybersecurity is a massive problem, the first step towards protecting your online identity is as easy as securing your passwords. “That’s where it all starts,” he says.
Why businesses should care
Yes, us regular Joes are in need of a cybersecurity facelift. But so are the businesses collecting and playing with our data.
Unfortunately, most founders don’t launch companies with cybersecurity top-of-mind. And if they do, maintaining oversight of each and every employee might feel unscalable and impossible. According to Darren, a battle worth fighting.
“We have a saying: It only takes one weak password to wreck a company,” says Darren. “Password security has to permeate across every employee and every single device. Smartphone, tablet, computer, everything needs to be locked down and protected.”
Size (of the business) matters
Password security is especially important for the little guys.
“The majority of the companies being breached are the small to medium sized businesses. They’re easy targets, there’s millions of them, and they don’t have formal IT budgets.”
Hackers know that small companies don’t have the resources to prioritize cybersecurity. That’s why they’re even more at risk of a security breach, sometimes with dire consequences.
“If you’re a small to medium size business and you’re subject to a major data breach, more than 60 percent of those businesses are out of business within six months.”
How are new businesses and small companies supposed to manage their cybersecurity when they don’t have the infrastructure to support it? Darren shares two tips:
- Prioritize cybersecurity from the beginning. “The biggest problem that I see is lack of mindset,” he says. “You have to adapt a cybersecurity mindset. It has to be like top of mind.”
- Commit to all four cornerstones of cybersecurity: prevention, detection, remediation and response (or reporting). Then, he says, invest technology and budget into supporting each of those phases.
Seamless and uncomplicated
If companies are going to commit to cybersecurity, Keeper needs to make it simple. “That is number one,” says Darren. “This product is designed to be super, super easy to use.”
After downloading Keeper Security, the app will walk you through the entire process of protecting your passwords. It’s both well-curated and operates at a hyper level of security: “convenience and security unified.”
And Keeper doesn’t stop at your top five most visited websites.
Darren says his product is more like “a ubiquitous digital vault” that will store the code to your alarm of your house, documents, and even images of your credit and debit cards.
“We’ll get wide scale adoption inside of business. You’ll use it without thinking twice about it.
