Why can’t the people we entrust our livelihoods with even manage the money?
modern cyber security from the report It turns out how immeasurably irresponsible many CEOs and business owners can be in terms of the strength of the account passwords they choose. Imagine entrusting the livelihood of hundreds or even thousands of employees to someone who uses “123456” or “qwerty” as their password.
The research comes from password manager NordPass, which already two years ago, in 2020, found that the most common passwords used by the public are serial numbers such as “123456”, “picture1” and “yes”, “password”.
Another research sample consists of 290 million cybersecurity data breaches worldwide and includes participants’ jobs. It turns out that the password choices for CEOs and other senior company executives are pretty much the same as those of the general public, although many use names as well. Tiffany was stabbed in 100,534 robberies, then Charlie was found 33,699 times, Michael was found 10,647 times, and Jordan was found 10,472 times.
The report also lists mythical creatures and animals as passwords that were hacked during the data breach. “Dragon” has been found 11926 times and “Monkey” 11,675 times.
Security experts recommend that companies consider using randomly generated passwords when creating new accounts. They argue that the strongest logos are those made up of 3 random words, something we can come up with with a story in our heads to help remember.
Even the UK’s National Cyber Security Center recommends this.
Work is already underway on the current, more complex password generator, which encourages making passwords more memorable using history items. The use of such generators in the IT department of business means that everyone gets a pleasant password that is difficult to crack, and because it is memorable, people are less likely to turn it into something stupid like “dragon”.
The research is deeply troubling and makes it painfully clear that the majority of data hacking is not due to some in-depth hacking initiative; About 80% due to weak passwords for shallow people (Verizon).
It seems to be a way of educating not only subordinates on security issues, but also management.
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