World Password Day 2023

Strong and secure passwords are crucial, especially now that most of our work is done online. It is better to have complex and unique passwords, which are not easy to guess as it makes the hackers work harder which in turn protects our personal and company data. 

Since we now live in the digital age, it is imperative to have a secure password for your privacy. Password security is measured by strength, which is why people often incorporate a mixture of characters to make it harder for someone to guess or remember and access their accounts.

It is important to have a password that is long, unique, and somewhat technical or complex as a means of protecting your valuable information from unauthorised hands or access.

Did you know that:  

• In 2013, there were 130 million accounts that were stolen in the 2013 Adobe Hack.  
• Of those 130 million stolen accounts, 3.2 million had passwords like “123456,” Password,” or “12345678.” 
• The minimum password length to avoid brute-force cracking is 13 characters.  
• Almost half of businesses store administrative passwords in spreadsheets or word documents.  
• An eight-character password using only upper or lower-case characters has over 200+ billion potential password combinations.  
• Using 1991 cracker technology, it would take over 6,000-years to crack a random eight-character password with random symbols and letters. 
• That same eight-character password can be cracked in 2021, in about 9-years. 
• Approximately a third of all phishing emails get opened by the receiver.  
• In 2017, 90% of all phishing emails carried some form of ransomware.  
• The list of the top ten passwords used over the past five years has hardly changed.