Is your password on the naughty list?

As an IT Support company security plays a big part in what we do and one of the simplest ways to put your security at risk is an insecure password. SplashData compiled data from over 2 million leaked passwords made publicly available and have come up with their annual “Worst Passwords List” this is to highlight the insecure passwords a lot of people are still using and which are incredibly easy to both guess and crack, thereby putting them at risk for hacking and identity theft.

Before I go on to talk about how best to secure your passwords have a browse over the 25 worst passwords below and see if you are on it. This is compiled mostly from America and Europe so if you are reading this and you are in Glasgow where we are based you might want to add some common Glasgow passwords that you really don’t want to use to the list such as Celtic, Rangers, Henrik, Laudrup, etc you get the gist.

Ok password security is relatively simple to implement, below are some basic pointers for securing your data/identity.

1. Maintain an 8-character minimum length requirement, and longer is not necessarily better for instance qwertyuiop is 10 characters but it is simply the top line of your keyboard and easily cracked.
2. Don’t use a single word (e.g. “football”) or a commonly-used phrase (e.g.“letmein”).
3. Do make your password hard to guess even by those who know a lot about you. For instance, let’s say you have a Facebook friend who can see your date of birth, what your favourite band is, your favourite actor, your dog’s name etc. are you using any of these for a password?  think about who is on your friends list and what they could do with this information…
4. Don’t use a password that is the same or similar to one you use on any other website. A cybercriminal who can break into that website can steal your password from it and use it to get into other accounts.
5. Use some form of 2 step verification wherever it is available.
6. Keep your operating system, browser, and other software up to date.
7. Be careful of suspicious emails and websites.
8. Install an antivirus program on your computer.

Implementing the above will allow you to resist common attacks and contain any successful attacks.  I hope you have found this useful.