One of any company’s most precious commodities is its passwords. When cybercriminals get one through any means including phishing, they have a key to your front door – and right to the heart of your business if they snatch a privileged credential. Bad passwords and exposed passwords notch up the risk of a disaster – and so does poor password hygiene. Password risk is a real minefield for businesses. Here are 10 more facts about passwords that you’ll want to see before adding a new secure identity and access management solution. 

10 More Facts about Passwords That You’ll Want to See 

1. Microsoft says that 99.9% of password-based threats can be stopped with multi factor authentication. 

1. Credentials were the top type of information stolen in data breaches worldwide in 2020. 

1. Approximately 60% of data breaches involve improper use of credentials. 

1. Over 40% of respondents in a 2020 study said that their organization had been compromised because of a bad, stolen or cracked password.   

1. An overwhelming majority of passwords fit into one of 20 common categories. 

1. More than 40% of organizations rely on sticky notes for password management. 

1. About three-quarters of employees reuse work passwords for their personal accounts.
2. An estimated 60% of passwords that appeared in more than one breach in 2020 were recycled or reused. 

1. Almost 25% of breaches were the result of credential stuffing in 2020.

As we saw in the 10 more facts about passwords list above, employees will choose memorability over security when making a password every time. That’s why we thought you’d probably also want to see these facts about how bad passwords are born.

Most passwords originate from these groups – 59% of Americans use a person’s name or family birthday in their passwords, 33% include a pet’s name and 22% use their own name. Oh, and the average user reuses that bad password about 14 times! 

Based on our analysis of the top 250 passwords that we found using Dark Web ID to guard against credential exposure, these categories of information were used to generate the weakest passwords in 2020 were: Names, Sports, Food, Places, Animals, and Famous People/Characters.

Fuente: ID Agent