P@S3m0Rd pRoT0kOL!

This week I was helping a friend with some issues they had on their personal computer. We needed to log in to a number of their accounts to fix some issues. I was blown away at how a friend of mine could use the same password for every one of their accounts, email, social media, work… Now this is not an unusual occurrence to be sure!

I decided to look in to a potential clients Dark Web presence which is something we have the ability to do, and yes it’s legal. When I saw the report that came back I was astounded at how many of the people who work at this large prestigious company use such simple passwords, and the variations are even simpler! Almost to the point of, as an example, secret123 then changed to secret12345, secret1234. I wish I could say this was an exaggeration. When I spoke to a key person at this company and presented this information to them they asked me “how the hell did you get my password!”. I told them that I was the least of their worry for knowing their password, what they should really be concerned about is that it is out there in the Dark Web real threat actors have it. And they likely have their credit card numbers, banking information, etc. Not just your personal but your business accounts, bank, email, LinkedIn, etc.

But here is the big one folks, they have your password! And you don’t even know because you don’t have access to the information I do!!!

So what do you need to do? Stop using passwords like fluffy1234, your kids names, pets names, all these are too easy to hack. In the article below they have set out some phenomenal guidelines to follow, and provided a table of how fast a hacker can get your password, unless of course you take some good advice and make it as hard to remember as it is to crack!

This is the time I take to discuss password managers and MFA for a quick minute. Don’t worry I’ll be blogging about it! Password Managers are very helpful tools and I suggest you look in to them and pick the right one for you, Nuvollo offers one of the Best In Class Password Managers for Business. And MFA (multi factor authentication) is that extra layer of protection that I have learned to love! You can use an authenticator app, SMS, etc., but I recommend to use MFA whenever possible.

When I first started working with Nuvollo I thought I would go mad with password changes, MFA and all that crazy security stuff, but I can tell you as I have become a bit of a Cybersecurity expert my friends, family and clients do not stop hearing me talk about it. My family is on a strict diet of strong passwords, MFA!

How an 8-character password could be cracked in less than an hour

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