The number of hacks and other types of cybersecurity attacks and breaches have been increasing pretty dramatically, and the past year and half during which a big part of the workforce has been working from home has not really done all that much to help matters to any degree at all. With the pandemic slowly starting to recede and vaccinations rising in their quantity, people are starting to look at the future for a time during which the coronavirus will have become a distant memory and things will ostensibly end up going back to normal in as many ways as possible.
However, it is important to note that the post pandemic world might not be quite as rosy as we all expect. There are a lot of signs indicating that a return to the supposed normal in a post pandemic world might bring with it some pretty severe cybersecurity disasters that a lot of people will struggle to recover from.
The Morning Consult conducted a survey sponsored by IBM Security and this revealed that the fact that so many people were working from home has resulted in them becoming somewhat lax with regards to the cybersecurity protocols that they follow. The lack of a formal office space with its own rules and regulations has led to a rise in weak passwords, but this isn’t entirely due to the reason that people have gotten lazy although that certainly has a thing or two to do with the impending crisis that could potentially occur.
Rather, a far more pertinent contributor to this sort of thing is the fact that there has been such a huge increase in the number of apps that people sign up for and use relatively regularly. Around 15 new accounts and profiles were made on average based on the users that were contacted during this survey, and with so many different accounts that people need to juggle they often started using the same password for each of them or alternatively they decided to use a set of different but weak passwords.
The very short signup process can also be a major contributor for this sort of situation. People are looking to sign up for apps and accounts so quickly that they often don’t stop to think about how secure their password is. When these people return to working from an office in any capacity at all, suffice it to say that the sheer quantity of easy to crack passwords would potentially result in malicious actors and hackers having a field day that would enable them to breach security in a wide range of organizations.
Read next: Password Statistics Show Dire State of Online Security (infographic)
However, it is important to note that the post pandemic world might not be quite as rosy as we all expect. There are a lot of signs indicating that a return to the supposed normal in a post pandemic world might bring with it some pretty severe cybersecurity disasters that a lot of people will struggle to recover from.
The Morning Consult conducted a survey sponsored by IBM Security and this revealed that the fact that so many people were working from home has resulted in them becoming somewhat lax with regards to the cybersecurity protocols that they follow. The lack of a formal office space with its own rules and regulations has led to a rise in weak passwords, but this isn’t entirely due to the reason that people have gotten lazy although that certainly has a thing or two to do with the impending crisis that could potentially occur.
Rather, a far more pertinent contributor to this sort of thing is the fact that there has been such a huge increase in the number of apps that people sign up for and use relatively regularly. Around 15 new accounts and profiles were made on average based on the users that were contacted during this survey, and with so many different accounts that people need to juggle they often started using the same password for each of them or alternatively they decided to use a set of different but weak passwords.
The very short signup process can also be a major contributor for this sort of situation. People are looking to sign up for apps and accounts so quickly that they often don’t stop to think about how secure their password is. When these people return to working from an office in any capacity at all, suffice it to say that the sheer quantity of easy to crack passwords would potentially result in malicious actors and hackers having a field day that would enable them to breach security in a wide range of organizations.
