World Password Day!

Today’s World Password Day! We recommend celebrating by grabbing your favorite adult beverage, coming up with a memorable passphrase, and changing all of your credentials.

Please note that we said passPHRASE and not passWORD. According to the latest password guidance from NIST, using a lengthy phrase like ‘Thisismyreallysuperlongpassphrase!’ is better than using a complex password like ‘p@$$w0rd!’.

Also, we recommend doing this from your computer or mobile device which is least likely to have been compromised lately. Unfortunately, on more than a few occasions, we’ve seen bad guys use keyloggers on compromised computers to obtain passwords during password changes.

What is World Password Day?

Intel began World Password Day in 2012. World Password Day gives us an opportunity to highlight the importance of password security by encouraging you to utilize randomly generated, strong (long), and unique passwords across all logins to support good cybersecurity hygiene.

With the number of websites and applications employees require to successful do their job increasing, many employees are relying on the same set of credentials to access multiple resources.  

Sadly, various studies show that around 90% of employees use the same password across multiple accounts. Using the same credential on multiple accounts creates a cybersecurity risk for businesses. For example, if someone uses the same password for LinkedIn as they do for a sensitive business application and LinkedIn gets hacked (again), the sensitive business application is now also at risk.

Worst Passwords of 2020

For both entertainment and security purposes, we’ve provided top passwords from NordPass’ ‘Worst passwords of 2020’ list, which shows the most common passwords found in a leak containing more than 275 million credentials. So, definitely don’t ever use any of these:

Top 20 overall:

1.   123456

2.   123456789

3.   picture1

4.   password

5.   12345678

6.   111111

7.   123123

8.   12345

9.   1234567890

10.  senha (Portuguese for password)

11.   1234567

12.  qwerty

13.  abc123

14.  Million2

15.  000000

16.  1234

17.  iloveyou

18.  aaron431

19.  password1

20. qqww1122

Worst entertainment passwords:

1. pokemon

2. superman

3. naruto

4. blink182

5. batman

6. starwars

Worst sports passwords:

1. soccer

2. football

3. baseball

4. basketball

5. football1

Worst food passwords:

1. chocolate

2. cookie

3. pepper

4. cheese

5. peanut

Worst ‘obscenity’ passwords:

1. f**kyou

2. f**kyou1

As an aside…you have to wonder if these were typed after several rejected attempts due to complexity requirements…

If password or credential management has been a struggle, don’t hesitate to contact us so we can help you come up with a strategy that enhances security and mitigates risk without impacting productivity.

Have a great World Password Day!