Security Basics for New Hires
Updated for 2026 — now with the passphrase rule. About five minutes.
You get your login on your first day. This course covers the three habits that stop most problems: making one strong password, spotting a fake email, and locking your screen when you walk away.
Northwind Group is a fictional workplace used for practice.
Nothing here is sent to your employer. When this course runs inside a learning system, the system fills this in for you and this box does not appear.
1. Length beats cleverness, and reuse undoes both
A long password made of ordinary words is harder to break than a short one full of symbols.
The old advice was to swap letters for symbols, so people ended up with something like P@ssw0rd1. It is short, it follows a pattern anyone can guess, and it is miserable to type. Four unrelated words in a row, like copper-lantern-drift-pony, is far longer, far easier to remember, and far harder to crack.
The bigger mistake is reuse. When any website is breached, attackers try that same email and password everywhere else. One password per account, kept in the password manager Northwind gives you, means one breach stays one problem.
2. Spot the phishing email
A phishing email is a fake message built to make you click before you think.
This one went to everyone at Northwind last Tuesday. Five things about it are wrong. Click anything that looks off to you, and you will find out whether it is one of them.
Our records show that your account has not been verified. Access will be removed within the hour unless you act now.
Sign in here to keep your account:
Regards,
The IT Team
3. Lock the screen every single time
An unlocked screen is your login, left open, with your name on everything that happens next.
Two minutes at the coffee machine is long enough. Anything done on your unlocked computer is recorded as you: the email sent, the file opened, the record changed. Most of the time nothing happens, and the one time it does, it is your account in the log.
Make it a reflex you do not think about. Windows key and L on a PC, Control Command Q on a Mac. Stand up, lock, walk away. It takes less than a second and it removes the whole problem.
Quick check
Three questions. You get an explanation after each one.
You are done
0%
Your score has been sent to the learning system.
The three ideas again
Use one long passphrase per account, never reused. Slow down the email that is rushing you. Lock the screen every time you stand up.
Your manager will give you the service desk number on your first day. Report anything odd there, even if you already clicked.