88% of Passwords Used By Businesses Consist of Basic Phrases

Keeping a secure password is essential because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allowing your data to stay safe from prying eyes. This is even more important for businesses who have some extremely valuable information that they would ideally want to protect with all things having been considered and taken into account. In spite of the fact that this is the case, most of the passwords used by businesses are just not up to scratch.

A password management firm by the name of Specops just released a report, and with all of that having been said and now out of the way it is important to note that the findings of this report are quite concerning. It turns out that around 88% of passwords used by commercial entities consisted of fewer than 12 characters. That will make them far less secure than might have been the case otherwise.

What’s more, extremely common phrases were being used in these passwords. Phrases like the word password itself, along with other obvious terms like admin were shockingly commonplace in workplace settings. The report also showed that one out of every five passwords used by businesses, or 20% to be precise, consisted solely of not just letters, but lowercase letters.

This reveals that businesses are not taking their cybersecurity needs as seriously as they ideally should. Ransomware attacks are on the rise, and passwords like these could make them even more prominent. Such phrases can be easily cracked through brute force, and it is high time that businesses give cybersecurity the relevance that it demands.

Even companies like Nvidia were guilty of such things. Passwords used by employees included the name of the company itself, along with “qwerty” and other single words that can be easily guessed without even requiring a brute force set up.

Using two factor authentication can be critical here. It can create a new layer of defense that will make passwords somewhat less necessary, although they will still have to be improved to one extent or another before it is too late.

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World