How businesses can avoid "exposure": celebrity photo thefts highlight the importance of strong passwords

-- Next generation single sign-on solution addresses security gap for businesses of all sizes

READING, England, Sept. 11, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Last week, Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities had indiscrete photos stolen and distributed across the Internet. It is speculated that their accounts were accessed by a "brute force" attack which can only be successful if their passwords were weak.

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Weak passwords are a risk for businesses, too. Verizon found that 76% of all network intrusions exploit weak or stolen passwords.

To protect critical data, every employee at every business must use strong passwords (which have no fewer than 12 characters). But with an average of 14.3 apps per business, users are likely to take shortcuts by creating passwords that are easy to memorise – and easy to crack.

Single sign-on helps enforce strong password usage… if you could afford one

A single sign-on (SSO) solution stores passwords for users and automatically logs them in to their apps. Users only have to remember one password, so they're more likely to create strong passwords instead of weak ones.

Unfortunately, SSO has historically been extremely complex to deploy, requiring on-site consultants and costly training. Which means smaller businesses have found SSO to be out of reach.

IntermediaAppID™ now makes single sign-on available to any business

Intermedia, the largest one-stop shop for cloud IT services for SMBs, has designed its new AppID service to be simple to deploy by any businesses, regardless of size or IT sophistication.

Existing Intermedia customers can deploy AppID in a single click, and non-Intermedia customers can easily integrate it with any on-premises Active Directory. While Intermedia's Cloud Concierge™ team is standing by 24/7 for deployment assistance, no training is necessary for either admins or users.

To learn more about single sign-on and Intermedia AppID, visit Intermedia.co.uk/AppID.

How single sign-on protects you in an era of insecure passwords

A single sign-on solution stores passwords and automatically logs users in with a single click. This provides employees with access to all their cloud apps using just one login and password for all their apps. This improves security in a number of ways:

• With just one password to remember, users are much more likely to use a strong one
• Admins can enforce 2-factor authentication as an added layer of security
• Access to the entire portal can be deprovisioned in just one click

Hardened security even beyond strong passwords

Intermedia's 2014 Rogue Access Study found that 89% of ex-employees retained access to corporate applications from former employers.  AppID slashes the potential for rogue access by making it much easier for IT to manage and track access to apps.

Patrick Ford, IT director for Magellan Search and Staffing, an Intermedia AppID customer, said: "The fewer passwords people have to remember, the better! With just one login required to access all their apps, users save up to an hour a day by not having to type in passwords or search for them. And I get back a full eight-hour day per week to do things not related to break-fix or password retrieval."

Felix Yanko, president of ServNET Technologies, an Intermedia partner, said: "AppID is becoming a cornerstone of our security offering. We're using it to introduce new security services to both new and existing customers—and because it's so simple to deploy, we can do so while maintaining efficiencies that assure high margins."

Michael Gold, president of Intermedia, said:  "The explosive growth in cloud-based web apps has created a need for stronger password security. AppID extends the protection and ease-of-use afforded by a single sign-on portal to any business. And because it's tightly integrated into our Office in the Cloud, it is simple to deploy and manage. This further allows smaller businesses to compete cost effectively against larger enterprises."

About Intermedia

Intermedia is the world's largest one-stop shop for cloud IT services and business applications. Its Office in the Cloud™ delivers the essential services that organisations need to do business – including hosted Exchange, Lync, Sharepoint, Email Archiving, security, mobility and more.

All of Intermedia's services are pre-integrated for a seamless user experience. They are all managed via Intermedia's HostPilot^® control panel, with just one login, one password, one bill and one source of support – creating tremendous cross-service efficiencies for both users and IT administrators. In addition, they all offer enterprise-grade security, 99.999% availability and 24/7 customer care to assure a worry-free experience.

Intermedia was the first company to offer hosted Microsoft Exchange and, with 60,000 customers and more than 1,000,000 users, is today the world's largest independent provider of hosted Exchange.

Intermedia also enables channel partners – including VARs, MSPs, telcos and cable companies – to sell cloud services under their own brand, with full control over billing, pricing and every other element of their customer relationships.

Intermedia's 600 employees in 3 countries manage 10 data centres to power its Office in the Cloud – and to assure its famous worry-free experience. Learn more at Intermedia.co.uk.

Contact:
Denis Davies/Andy Lloyd-Williams
+44-0118-909-0909
Intermedia@BerkeleyPR.co.uk