As organizations invest time and money into staying safe from cyber threats, it is important to measure how well their cybersecurity investments are paying off.
Take password policy for example: every organization has a password policy (even the standard Active Directory configuration) and may also have additional password management software in place.
But if you’re not measuring tangible password security metrics, how will you know if your strategy is making a positive impact?
One way to achieve this is to align password policies with broader cybersecurity KPIs.
In this post, we’ll discuss four areas where you can track concrete metrics to see if your password policy is actually having a positive impact on your overall cybersecurity goals.
We will also share some free tools that can help you discover vulnerabilities in your Active Directory.
Why use KPIs to evaluate password policies?
Aligning your password policy with broader cybersecurity KPIs helps prove the value of your investment. This data gives your IT team a better understanding of the success or failure of your password security policy and helps you identify areas for improvement.
Ultimately, the purpose of a strong password policy is to increase access security and reduce potential data breaches.
Monitoring the effectiveness of your security policies helps you demonstrate the success of your efforts to stakeholders and management. You will gain a better understanding of your Active Directory security posture, and if you find any areas that are lacking, you can make the necessary changes to keep your network safe.
Tracking Password KPIs
Having a strong password policy is key to securing your network. Measuring the effectiveness of your policy against the following KPIs will help you identify and fix potential issues before damage occurs:
Corporate Compliance
Frameworks such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) password standard define requirements for creating secure passwords and set minimum complexity requirements.
To measure success in this area, IT teams should regularly check their compliance with Commons standards and ensure they are following recommended authentication protocols.
Weak Password Check
Preventing users from creating weak passwords is the main purpose of a password policy.
Using auditing tools to periodically scan Active Directory will reveal reduced or permanently removed end-user accounts that have no passwords, have expired passwords, or have the same password as another user.
The best password policies should also block commonly used base terms, keyboard walks, and custom base terms related to your specific business or industry.
Scan for compromised passwords
It’s important to remember that even strong passwords can be compromised if end-users reuse them on personal devices or on websites with weak security.
Regularly scanning for compromised or compromised passwords in Active Directory can help block potential attack routes.
User-initiated password reset requests
Tracking how often users reset their passwords can help you identify weaknesses in your security systems or flaws in your authentication protocols.
A high number of requests may indicate that users frequently forget their passwords or possible malicious attempts to reset them. A sudden increase in failed logins or reset attempts may be a sign of a cyber attack.
Privileged Account Monitoring
The security of privileged accounts is essential to the security posture of any organization, and it is critical that IT teams be able to measure the strength of the password policies around these accounts.
To achieve this, you can track three key performance indicators (KPIs): privilege escalation incidents, privilege review cycle time, and privilege revocation time.
Want to know how your organization stacks up in terms of the above? Find out all this and more with Specops Password Auditor, a free, read-only Active Directory auditing tool.
Is your multi-factor authentication (MFA) effective?
MFA is an essential part of a secure password policy and adds an extra layer of security by requiring users to provide two or more pieces of evidence when logging into a system. But setting it up isn’t enough; IT teams need to measure the effectiveness of their MFA policies. Here are three KPIs IT teams should follow:
Adoption Rate: This metric tracks the number of users who are using MFA when logging into your system. To effectively protect against unauthorized access attempts, it is important that all users are using MFA. A low adoption rate indicates that users may not realize the importance of protecting their accounts with additional security measures such as MFA.
Authentication Success/Failure Rates: Track how often users successfully authenticate with MFA and how often they fail to authenticate due to incorrect codes or forgotten credentials. A high failure rate may indicate a lack of user awareness of the importance of using MFA or difficulty remembering multiple sets of credentials, which, if left unchecked, could lead to compromised accounts.
Bypass rate: How often an attacker is able to bypass MFA by guessing passwords or exploiting vulnerabilities. A high bypass rate means that attackers have found a way around your security measures, which should be addressed immediately.
Get a snapshot of your password vulnerabilities now
Specops Password Auditor is a free read-only auditing tool that helps IT teams proactively identify password vulnerabilities within their organization’s Active Directory.
Dynamic reports provide valuable insights into KPIs such as regulatory compliance, weak/compromised passwords, and privileged account activity, helping you improve existing protocols.
Need to strengthen your Active Directory password policies? Find out how with Specops Password Policy, free for 30 days.
Sponsored and created by Specops Software.
