Studies have shown that 90% of all employee passwords can be cracked in 6 hours or less. This is a pretty scary statistic and one that will only get worse as time goes on.
With as many passwords as we need to remember these days it is very tempting to use the same password across all accounts. While this does make remembering your password easier, it also means that any potential hackers will only need to crack one password in order to gain access to all of your accounts. Here are some more statistics that I hope will help you understand the importance of a secure password.
- The latest Government Security Breaches Survey found that nearly three-quarters (74%) of small organizations reported a security breach in the last year; an increase on the 2013 and 2014 survey.
- In 2015 more than 178 million records on Americans were exposed in cyber-attacks.
- Cybercrime and cyber spying cost the US economy $100 billion a year and the global economy about $300 billion annually.
Interestingly, an 8 character password will take “millennia” to hack if you just add an underscore, and/or a couple of number symbols (hold the shift key and press a number key)
If you are interested in checking out how secure a password is – look here-Securing Your Password. The article contains a tool that allows you to test the strength of your current passwords and provides tips on how to create secure passwords.