Today is World Password Day, which is held worldwide every Thursday for the first time since 2013 since 2013. The World Day aims to raise awareness of the importance of conscious use of a password as research over the years has shown that users still don’t care topic enough.
It is alarming, for example, that according to a recent survey by the UK Cyber Security Center (NCSC), 15% of respondents use their pet’s name as a password, 13% give them an important personal history and another 6 percent use their favorite sports club as a passcode. These are typical errors. ESET’s cybersecurity experts have gathered to mark International What to Look for Day.
Use strong and unique passwords
Many of us would probably agree that creating a strong and secure password is not complicated and everyone should do it, but numerous statistics, surveys, and privacy incidents have already shown that few accept this advice. Every year, NordPass publishes a list of the most used passwords, which showed that in 2020, easy-to-guess combinations of numbers such as “123456”, “123456789” and “12345678” were still the most popular among users. These identifiers do not provide sufficient protection, with the first five passwords involving more than 4.5 million users and a total of more than 38 million data breaches.
Leave the work to the password generator
When creating new passwords, always try to create identifiers that are hard to guess. We avoid dictionary words, easy-to-guess phrases, and personal information such as the names of our family members. This can be helped by our free password generator which generates the correct password for us based on the number of characters we choose.
Avoid reusing passwords
According to a study by the German Hasso Plattner Institute with 1 billion user accounts, 20 percent of users use the same password for multiple accounts, while 27 percent of survey respondents enter roughly the same passwords for the profiles they manage. As we manage multiple accounts each year, it is becoming increasingly difficult to guess and remember a strong password for each of our profiles. A good solution to this is a password manager that can store more complex passwords.
It is actually a digital safe where you can easily put the used passwords in different places, all you have to do is memorize the master password. This way, we don’t have to worry about remembering our passwords, and we don’t have to worry for minutes about the code we entered earlier for our rarely used accounts.
Let’s take advantage of multi-factor authentication
More and more interfaces make it possible to use multi-factor authentication, which provides an extra layer of security for users because they require additional authentication in addition to entering a password. The most common method is to enter the code you receive in an SMS or email, but the most secure method is to use a dedicated authentication app or hardware solution, such as authentication codes.
Thus, in cases where we do not initiate access, we may be notified immediately that an unauthorized person is attempting to gain access to our account and may take appropriate action immediately.
Change your password at least every three months!
It is advisable to renew all important passwords regularly, especially if you share a particular device with other users. You may also want to change our code if your antivirus detects malware. At haveibeenpwned.com, we can check which passwords have been leaked and which have been revealed. This huge database, collected over the years, now contains more than 11 billion pairs of stolen passwords and names.
The frequent problem of password security can be solved more easily by following these good tips. Never share your passwords with others, but feel free to share these safety steps and tips with your kids, family, and friends!
