It's crucial to keep your Timely account secure, to protect both your business and client data. This is an integral part of running a business, and ensures you are aligned to PCI-DSS and GDPR requirements. You can find out more about these requirements in the links below. In this article, we'll share recommendations to help you maintain great security hygiene.
Important links: PCI compliance: protecting client's credit card information and GDPR: keeping your clients information secure.
How to keep your Timely account secure
Timely password requirements
When inputting a new password, your entry will be checked against a public database, found here. This is a list of passwords that have been previously breached from other systems, and as such your password cannot be something from within this database. If it is, you will be asked to enter an alternate password choice.
Timely has fixed requirements around length and complexity:
- Minimum 12 characters
- One lowercase letter
- One uppercase letter
- One special character
- One number
How to create a robust & complex password
When creating a password, it can be tempting to use wording associated with: children, family birthdays, the name of your pets, or commonly used terms such as password or hello etc. This is information that is easy to find online, which means your password becomes easier to guess; especially with the rise in use of artificial intelligence.
- You can scatter capital letters rather than having them only at the beginning
- You can also replace letters with numbers to increase complexity
- You can use special characters throughout (note: underscores are not special characters)
- Create a long password, with 12 characters or more
Here are some examples:
- The cat sat on the m@t
- My favourite drink is coff33!
-
Jack and the b3an stalk
Important note: these are just examples! Please create your own version.
How to remember your password
Important note: do not store your password on your computer or phone in the notes section, or via messaging it to yourself over text, Facebook, Instagram etc.
Use a password manager
Password managers are the best way to keep your passwords secure. Lastpass and Dashlane are two commonly used password managers that are easy to use on both desktop and mobile devices. You can install extensions to your web browser as well to automatically fill in your passwords for you.
The other helpful aspect of password managers is that most include a password generator. These generate random passwords that are very hard to crack and automatically save them for future use with that particular website and username.