Still Using a Weak Password? It could Cultivate a Grave for Your Entire Organization!

With only a single compromise, you could lose millions and bury your business for good. As per a report from IBM, a data breach in the health industry is equivalent to losing $7.13 million, and the average cost of a data breach globally is $3.86 million. It further stated that data breaches from the US are the costliest, at an average of $8.64 million.

Passwords are keys to modern online activities. At least anyone with a computer, smartphone, tablet, or any other gadget uses one. A password is a combination of different numbers, letters, or both. Some passwords could be termed strong whereas others weak, but the strength of any password can never be guaranteed.

NordPass researchers analyzed data from third-party breaches, and the data included details from over 15 million breaches across different industries. The researchers analyzed the ten most used passwords, their uniqueness, and the data breaches that each sector experienced.

The most used passwords across all sectors include “123456”, “123’’, “Hello123”, and “Sunshine.” This data was collected from several industries such as energy, eCommerce, technology, retail, and IT. Many retrieved passwords were the same like in other companies or with a slight difference. Also, many passwords directly link to the company name or with a slight variation.

Generally, there is still a need to educate people, employees, and internet users about passwords. Overall, passwords are a must-have, but the strength and reliability of a password make a huge difference.

How to Help Employees Create Better Passwords?

Employees can utilize several ways to adopt stronger passwords to safeguard their online activities. These include;

Creating Stronger Passwords 

Avoid any common password, and if you are to create one, analyze the most breached passwords. A strong password comprises at least 12 characters, and it’s a combination of numbers, letters, and symbols. It is also made using the upper and the lower case characters.

When creating a password, there is a more advanced way of ensuring its strength, and that is by using a password generator. A Password Generator is a modern tool and creates passwords randomly depending on the input. Some password generators create passwords with special characters such as asterisks, braces, while others create more recognizable passwords.

Update Any Password

Passwords can also be updated, most especially if you suspect a compromise, having been used for a long time, or after being exposed to threats. Similarly, use different passwords for your social media platforms, workplace, and devices.

Two-factor authentication

Saskatoon SEO Services suggests using 2FA to secure your important data. Two-factor or multi-factor authentication is a security approach where users provide more than one verification factor to gain access to an account or application. It is an enhanced security measure and can help reduce an organization’s data breach chances. However, the major problem with this is that in case the user makes a slight error while entering the code, the authentication will not work.

All in all, millions still don’t get the exact meaning of a strong password. Set standard password security measures in a workplace to guide employees on how to create and update passwords.