How To Prevent Brute Force Attacks

Brute force attacks are one of the most common methods used by cybercriminals to steal credentials from organizations. To prevent brute force attacks, organizations need to enforce the use of strong and unique passwords, invest in a business password manager, require employees to enable MFA, monitor and limit login attempts, implement passwordless authentication and delete inactive accounts.

Continue reading to learn more about brute force attacks, six ways your organization can prevent them and how to detect them.

What is a brute force attack?

A brute force attack is a type of cyber attack that uses software to guess credentials through trial and error. The software will input commonly used dictionary words and phrases or specific letter and number combinations until it gets a match. Brute force attacks can easily compromise accounts that use weak or reused passwords. Common types of brute force attacks include simple brute force, credential stuffing, password spraying and dictionary attacks.

6 ways to prevent brute force attacks

Many employees resort to using weak, easy-to-remember passwords to “protect” their work accounts, putting their organization at risk of falling victim to successful brute force attacks. However, there are six ways in which organizations can mitigate the risk of brute force attacks.

1. Enforce the use of strong, unique passwords

The best way to prevent brute force attacks from compromising an organization’s passwords is by enforcing the use of strong and unique passwords. Strong passwords should be both long and complex to make it difficult for cybercriminals to crack them. Unique passwords should be required for each account to prevent credential stuffing from compromising multiple accounts. 

Organizations can also suggest to their employees to use passphrases to protect work accounts. A passphrase is a string of random and unrelated words that can be used as a password. Because passphrases are long and use random words that are unrelated to each other, or the user, brute force techniques are less effective in cracking them.

2. Invest in a business password manager

A business password manager is a tool that allows organizations and their employees to track, store, share, protect and manage all of their passwords. The passwords are stored in each employee’s digitally encrypted vault which can only be accessed with their strong master password. A password manager can identify weak passwords which encourages employees to strengthen them using the built-in password generator. A password manager allows administrators to monitor employee password practices and enforce the use of strong and unique passwords for every account.

3. Require employees to enable MFA

Multi-factor authentication is a security protocol that requires users to provide multiple forms of authentication to access their accounts. When MFA is enabled, users must provide their login credentials along with another factor of authentication such as a biometric or Time-Based One-Time Password (TOTP). MFA provides an extra layer of security by ensuring that only authorized users can access their accounts. Even if a password is compromised through a brute force attack, cybercriminals would not be able to access the victim’s account because they could not provide the additional authentication factor.

4. Monitor and limit login attempts

Organizations need to monitor the login attempts to their accounts. They should be looking at the IP address that is trying to log in to confirm it is from an authorized user, along with if the number of login attempts is unusual. This will help organizations detect potential brute force attacks. Organizations can put a timer between each failed login attempt to limit how quickly cybercriminals can input information and alert organizations of suspicious activity. They should also put a limit on the number of login attempts. By limiting the number of login attempts, organizations can block a cybercriminal’s software from guessing the credentials for the organization’s accounts.

5. Implement passwordless authentication whenever possible

Passwordless authentication is an authentication method that does not use passwords to verify an individual’s identity. Instead, it uses biometric identifiers, magic links or passkeys. Since passwords are not used in passwordless authentication, it is resistant to brute force and phishing attacks. 

6. Delete inactive accounts

Organizations should delete inactive accounts to reduce the number of potential points of entry for cybercriminals and reduce their attack surface. Cybercriminals can execute brute force attacks to try to guess the login credentials of inactive accounts and gain unauthorized access to the organization’s network. Inactive accounts should be terminated as soon as possible.

How to detect brute force attacks

Organizations need to monitor the login attempts and activity of their accounts to help detect any brute force attack attempts. Here is what organizations need to look out for to detect brute force attacks.

• Unusual amount of failed login attempts
• Login attempts from suspicious IP addresses
• Failed login attempts for multiple accounts from the same IP address
• Strange account activity after successful login

An organization needs to monitor the login attempts of its accounts to see if a cybercriminal is attempting to guess its passwords. If an organization notices unusual login attempts from suspicious IP addresses, it can block the IP addresses from attempting to log in and prevent successful brute force attacks.

If an organization notices strange account activity after a successful login, a cybercriminal may have successfully guessed an organization’s password and gained unauthorized access to its network. Organizations need to investigate if the activity is from an unauthorized user. If it is, the organization needs to remove the unauthorized user’s access and change the password to that account immediately.

Use Keeper® to prevent brute force attacks

Brute force attacks exploit weak passwords to gain unauthorized access to an organization’s accounts and network. However, organizations can easily prevent brute force attacks by investing in a password manager. A password manager helps organizations use strong, unique passwords and MFA to protect their accounts. Some password managers will help organizations implement passwordless authentication such as passkeys. 

Keeper Password Manager uses zero-trust security and zero-knowledge encryption to ensure that only authorized users can access an organization’s password vault and no one else. It gives organizations complete visibility, control and security over employee password practices.