August 5, 2019
Passwords are supposed to keep us safe. In fact, they’re a high-security risk.
You’d be forgiven for assuming that your junior staff would be the users with the least security awareness. But it’s simply not true. Stats show people who work at high levels use passwords that are simply too weak, or follow poor guidelines. You don’t have to look far for examples…
Take Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. Depending on who you believe, Podesta’s password for his personal email account was ‘Password’. Other sources cite that he forgot his Apple iCloud password and asked his aid to email it to him.
Once the hacker went in, his passwords were exposed to the world. A series of embarrassing issues arising for the Clinton campaign ensued. The hackers started telling voters to ‘vote Trump.’ The campaign fell apart and serious ethical questions arose about Clinton and her campaign.
Your business cannot afford reputational damage, data losses and data breaches that expose your customer data and leave you open to fines… or worse.
The importance of an on-going cyber security programme
Regular penetration testing, sophisticated social engineering and in-depth user awareness training are all crucial parts of improving your cyber security. Together, they’ll expose any weak links in your security defences, whether they be passwords, unpatched systems, misconfigured hardware or more.
Ensuring implementation of a strong password policy is one of many stages towards your cyber security improvements. You can create actionable steps to make a real difference to your cyber security posture.
Related articles:
- How to create strong passwords (you can remember!)
- Is ransomware the biggest threat to your IT security?
- Top 20 CIS Critical Security Controls (Part 1): What are they?
- The 8 most common types of cyber attacks explained
About Comtact Ltd.
Comtact Ltd. is a government-approved Cyber Security and IT Managed Service Provider, supporting clients 24/7 from our ISO27001-accredited UK Security Operations Centre (SOC).
Located at the heart of a high security, controlled-access Tier 3 data centre, Comtact’s state-of-the-art UK Cyber Defence Centre (SOC) targets, hunts & disrupts hacker behaviour, as part of a multi-layered security defence, to help secure some of the UK’s leading organisations.