The Dangers of Password Reuse, and How to Avoid it
July 26, 2018
How many passwords do you use across all your devices and websites? 10? 20? It's Time to Use a Password Manager
A popular password management company report found that the average business employee will have as many as 191 passwords. Some may be used every day; some may be created once and never used again. Naturally, it is challenging and likely impossible to remember all these passwords. To avoid having to remember dozens of different passwords, many people will use the same passwords for all of their accounts.
While convenient for workers, this is a hazardous practice. Even if people use a strong password that cannot be brute-forced, using many letters with numbers and special characters, if just one of these passwords are stolen, all your accounts would be at risk. Almost every year, a large company has a data breach of information in the millions. Some of these companies in past years have included Yahoo, eBay, Target, and Adobe.
In many of these instances, the passwords of the company’s users were stolen. If a person’s stolen password is used for many other sites, hackers may be able to access all aspects of your life. Sensitive data, including banking information, health reports, and SOCial media accounts, will become vulnerable if your password is stolen. That same password management company report found 81% of data breaches at businesses are stolen or weak passwords.
So how can you avoid password reuse?
As stated before, even the strongest password can become useless if duplicated across multiple accounts. The best solution would be a password manager. A password manager is a program/extension that can be downloaded onto your computer. The manager will then save all your passwords and automatically remember which site they are to fill the password box automatically. With a password manager, you will only have to remember one master password for the manager.
Practice good Cybersecurity hygiene, get a password manager, better yet, find a good Managed IT Services Provider that has a strong security practice and will help you to improve your employee's security hygiene with an ongoing security awareness training program and continuous monitoring of your computer network.
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