Even Fortune 500 businesses have poor password hygiene
Many businesses use passwords that can be hacked in less than a second
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When it comes to password hygiene and security, evenFortune 500businesses don’t use secure passwords according to new research fromNordPass.
To compile it’s newFortune 500 password study, the researchers at the password management company analyzed data from public third-party breaches that affected Fortune 500 companies. In total, they analyzed data from over 15m breaches across 17 different industries to find the top 10 passwords used in each industry, the percentile of unique passwords and the number of data breaches affecting each industry.
While using simple passwords poses a risk to all users, businesses and their employees have a lot more to lose from reusing passwords across their online accounts. Back in February for instance, awater treatment facilityin Florida had a serious security breach due to the fact that it was still usingWindows 7with nofirewalland all of its employees shared the sameTeamViewerpassword.
Security expert at NordPass, Chad Hammond provided further insight on how weak employee passwords can jeopardize an organization’s entire business, saying:
“Businesses and their employees have a duty to protect their customers’ data. A weak password of one employee could potentially jeopardize the whole company if an attacker used the breached password to gain access to sensitive data.”
Poor password hygiene
According to NordPass' research, the top password in the retail and ecommerce, energy, technology, financial services, agriculture, media and advertising, hospitality, human resources and real estate industries is “password”. While “123456” is the most popular password in telecommunications and healthcare, many other industries simply use their “company name” as their password.
Simple passwords can easily lead to data breaches and according to areportfrom IBM, the average global cost of adata breachis now at $3.86m. However, a data breach in the healthcare industry costs much more at $7.13m and data breaches at US-based companies now cost an average of $8.64m.
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To improve password hygiene at businesses, NordPass recommends that they create complex and unique passwords using apassword generatororpassword manager, usemulti-factor authenticationand educate their employees on the risks of using simple password for their work and personal accounts.
After working with the TechRadar Pro team for the last several years, Anthony is now the security and networking editor at Tom’s Guide where he covers everything from data breaches and ransomware gangs to the best way to cover your whole home or business with Wi-Fi. When not writing, you can find him tinkering with PCs and game consoles, managing cables and upgrading his smart home.
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