Survey: Many passwords not secret, easy to crack
January 15, 2010 by Steve HannafordPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Security
Fifty percent of the population uses the same password for everything: online banking, social networking, and work-based email and data access. The result:
A massive vulnerability not just for the negligent individuals, but also their employers.
The fifty percent figure comes from a recent survey of computer users in the UK done by marketing services company CPP.
There’s no reason to suspect that their US counterparts do any better.
Other results from the survey:
- 30% admitted that at least one other person knew their password.
- 25% use their pet names as a password for logins
- 12% use significant dates like their birthdays.
- 10% suspect they’ve has their accounts accessed by an unauthorized person.
You’d think by now that people would be aware of such issues as identity theft and the cleverness of cyber criminals –- but you’d be wrong.
Companies should be aware that this is a problem that is likely to bite them. Now more than ever, it’s time to inform staff of the importance of creating harder-to-guess passwords and varying them, especially for access to important data.
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