Since we were very young, we were taught to recycle everything. That includes newspapers, empty water bottles, magazines, glass, cardboard boxes, and even car tires. It is all in an effort to make our lives better, and help save the world. However, reusing and recycling passwords and passphrases is the simplest and easiest way to ruin your world.
Reusing Green Passwords
Many individuals in their private life and at work use “green” passwords, where they tend to recycle the same passphrases and passwords repeatedly. When it is time to reset a password, they simply use their old one, such as “MyFavoritePassword1” and change it into “MyFavoritePassword2”. When it is time to change their passwords once again, they simply revert back to the first one. While it might be easy to remember one or two passwords, it increases the risk of being hacked by cyber-attackers eager to harvest critical confidential data from the user and possibly provide a back door to the entire infrastructure you’ve worked so hard to secure.
Anytime a cyber-attacker is able to crack a password and gain access into a user’s account, they are only interested in stealing confidential, high-value information. They either want it for themselves, or will sell it to others. Either way, a breech puts you at risk along with your company’s image, regardless of who was responsible for it.
How Strong Is Strong?
Sometimes it seems like most clients have well-meaning, but misinformed users. So how do you educate users how strong is strong when creating a new password? HowSecureIsMyPassword.net offers a valuable tool to determine exactly how secure a password is, and how long it would take for cyber-thief to crack it. It’s a very user friendly tool, and will explain how a user can bolster their mediocre credentials. It will even change the background color, based on the strength of the word or phrase they’ve entered.
Now that’s the kind of green we’re talking about.
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