How many times did you come across an article or a news update asking you to change your mediocre password? What is the approximate number of social sites that are using your pet’s or mother maiden’s name as a security credential? And are your life savings just a birthday guess away from being stolen? Worry not, as you are no different than top-level executives.
No one really wants to come up with a unique combination of letters and numbers every time they sign up for a service/website. It certainly is a hassle to remember and not easy to remember. You are not alone when it comes to this. Even the high ranking CEOs are being warned by their IT departments to change their security credentials. Surprisingly the most common password amongst these high ranking personas is 123456! The security risks that come with these easy guesses are huge but make one question, why do we practice bad password habits? It seems that no one wants to put in the extra effort to save someone from emptying out their accounts or stealing their identity.
Research led by Nordpass and independent researchers dived into the very question. They wanted an exclusive look into the poor password habits practiced by CEOs. This took over the analysis of 290 million data breaches across the globe! Indeed, it was not an easy task as each breach had to be traced back to its original source.
The analysis of data breaches and their grouping did yield positive results. It provided insights as to why it was so easy to hack and guess passwords. The findings were narrowed down to a string of letters and numbers being repeated in a sequence. Shockingly the password 123456 was used over 1 million times despite the warnings that are put by some systems as you type it. The word password was the second most used security credential and came up as being used over 700000 times! Sequences of numbers such as 12345 and 11111 also are pretty popular. It is enticing to use a security credential that can be easily remembered. However, it does come with the risk of your account being exposed and put at high risk!
How can one practice safe password habits? Luckily, Nordpass did put out a few suggestions in order to better your security credentials and make them harder to crack. A password generator is a go-to option! It will come up with a unique string of letters, numbers and symbols that are harder to guess. Even though a computer came up with a unique password, it will be a number of years before it can guess that very same combination!
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No one really wants to come up with a unique combination of letters and numbers every time they sign up for a service/website. It certainly is a hassle to remember and not easy to remember. You are not alone when it comes to this. Even the high ranking CEOs are being warned by their IT departments to change their security credentials. Surprisingly the most common password amongst these high ranking personas is 123456! The security risks that come with these easy guesses are huge but make one question, why do we practice bad password habits? It seems that no one wants to put in the extra effort to save someone from emptying out their accounts or stealing their identity.
Research led by Nordpass and independent researchers dived into the very question. They wanted an exclusive look into the poor password habits practiced by CEOs. This took over the analysis of 290 million data breaches across the globe! Indeed, it was not an easy task as each breach had to be traced back to its original source.
The analysis of data breaches and their grouping did yield positive results. It provided insights as to why it was so easy to hack and guess passwords. The findings were narrowed down to a string of letters and numbers being repeated in a sequence. Shockingly the password 123456 was used over 1 million times despite the warnings that are put by some systems as you type it. The word password was the second most used security credential and came up as being used over 700000 times! Sequences of numbers such as 12345 and 11111 also are pretty popular. It is enticing to use a security credential that can be easily remembered. However, it does come with the risk of your account being exposed and put at high risk!
How can one practice safe password habits? Luckily, Nordpass did put out a few suggestions in order to better your security credentials and make them harder to crack. A password generator is a go-to option! It will come up with a unique string of letters, numbers and symbols that are harder to guess. Even though a computer came up with a unique password, it will be a number of years before it can guess that very same combination!
