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In early May, the NordPass company, which is responsible for the password manager of the same name, shared the results of the study. To do this, the company has studied more than 290 million data breaches worldwide. The passwords were classified by different positions their owners possess, such as executives of different levels, managers, and business owners. The passwords “123456” and “123456789” proved to be just as popular among executives as they were among ordinary Internet users.
Some Interesting Facts
The leaders in the number of password leaks were France and the UK. Many executives prefer to use common names as passwords — Tiffany, Charlie, Michael, and Jordan are in the first place. In addition to names, senior officials like to use the designations of animals and mystical creatures — the most popular were “dragon” and “monkey.”
The most frequently used password among managers of any level and business owners was “123456”. The following are “password”, “12345”, “123456789”, “qwerty”, “1234”, “qwerty123”, and “111111”. They are simple, even though people know that the password should be reliable. It doesn’t matter what service you use — pizza delivery, zodiac casino, or online banking — your password must be reliable!
To secure company and employee data, NordPass advises using password managers, enabling multiple authentication steps, and starting cybersecurity training. However, there are also some ways to create a secure password.
Password Tips
Here is an example, take a look at 2 passwords:
- loU6@s!Je
- dogissleepingrighthere
Which one do you think is harder to hack with a computer? Which one is easier to remember? Answers to both of these questions: the second one.
Have you ever heard this: the password must be at least eight characters, it must combine characters from both registries, it would also be nice to use some number, and also, to be sure, add a special character to the password, say, an exclamation mark.
This is how we get our password from the very beginning: loU6@s!Je. According to all safety standards, it is considered stable and reliable. Considering how often we’re asked to create passwords like this, it’s fair to say that loU6@s!Je is an example of a good password. But do not be mistaken. There is nothing good about this password.
First, how to remember such a password? What if there are several of them? All this leads to the fact that users begin to store passwords in one place. And then they are “unexpectedly” hacked.
Secondly, users are starting to use one password, albeit a very complex one, for different services. When you create an account on a popular website, a code turns your password into a hash (often confused with encryption). The database will not store your password, but something like this: jjKKSS8890llKKAa88ae00abDaf8s9sfusafjsfUyydd982sxA6h.
Even if the database is hacked, attackers are unlikely to be able to do anything with such information. This is why you MUST use different passwords for different sites.
Let’s take a look at another password: dogissleepingrighthere. There are 22 characters, all lowercase. No numbers, no random characters, no spaces. Such a password the computer will crack for years. The more characters in the password, the harder it will be for the computer to crack it.