Imagine for a moment that someone stole the key for your bicycle lock. But since it’s locked safely in your garage anyway, it’s no big deal, right?

Now imagine that, for convenience, you had previously rekeyed every other lock you have so you could use that bike lock key in all of them. Your front door, your car, your mailbox and your safe deposit box at the bank are only secure if you keep that one key safe. Now how would you feel if you lost it?

Of course, nobody would be so careless as to make one key fit every lock, right? Well, take a moment to consider how many dozens of online accounts you have. How many of them use the same password? Think about what would happen if just one of those sites was hacked, and someone got a hold of your login information.

Even in the workplace, many users are likely to employ the same password to access any number of personal and business resources. With website credentials being constantly exposed, that poses a big problem. Just last week, in fact, more than 210,000 user passwords were compromised in Sweden. What if one of these users worked for you?

Businesses can lose millions of dollars if just one of their employees’ accounts is compromised, leading to the loss of sensitive corporate data. They face the increasingly difficult challenge of making information more accessible, which aids in employee productivity, without putting themselves at increased risk of data loss.

Given the sheer number of criminal activities going on across the Internet, the loss of corporate or personal data seems inevitable. But there are several steps that both businesses and individuals can take to improve their level of protection. The following best practices can help you keep your sensitive information as safe as possible.

1. The longer the password is, the better. Mandate a minimum of eight characters. Have them use phrases that will be easy to remember, substituting symbols for some of the letters.
2. Instruct users to employ a mixture of capital and lower-case letters.
3. Have them add in foreign words, texting terms, slang and nonsense words.
4. Create a system, rather than a password. One formula might yield dozens of passwords, making them all easier to remember while maintaining security.
5. Encourage users to create different passwords for different resources, and never to use the same passwords for personal and business use.
6. Instruct them to immediately notify the appropriate person in your organization if a breach is suspected.

While attacks on your network are not likely to decrease anytime soon, taking these steps will greatly improve your overall security level and reduce your exposure to costly data breaches. A varied, comprehensive approach to overall security will ensure that the “keys” to your sensitive corporate information are safe.