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Quick Passwords Advice

It can be difficult to think of something consisting of at least eight (or more) characters, with upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols (the best password structure), that you’ll remember. Password fatigue can be a real problem and can lead to the situation where you’ll settle for something that’s easy to remember, but easy to guess too.

Do not fall into this trap!

The recent cyber-attack on Parliament will have seen a number staff wish that they’d put a little more effort into their password selection. Through a procedure no more complex than testing for frequently used passwords, hackers were able to access up to 90 staff email accounts, leading to officials disabling remote access to emails by MPs, peers and their staff.

Such means of accessing data is both amongst the most straightforward and the most commonplace. Staff emails are deemed the weak point of many businesses’ cyber defences. Indeed (alarmingly!) of 781 UK businesses who reported a data breach over the last 12 months, 72% of the identified breaches were targeted against employees’ emails.

Please see the diagram from the Department of Culture Media & Sport, Cyber Security Breaches Survey, Main Report, April 2017

If a third party was able to access your systems, the impact could be devastating and longstanding, damaging profits and confidence in your Business.

Weak passwords are also inexcusable in the eyes of the Information Commissioners Office (responsible for data protection) and regulators take a dim view of these too.

 

So the moral of the story is that if you or your colleagues have a weak password, change them immediately.

Whilst we can assist with general cyber enquiries and responding to cyber attacks and and data hacks, we unfortunately cannot advise you on which passwords to use 🙂

We can, however, advise you not to do THIS