Your Password Has Been Stolen. Period.

That’s not hyperbole. This isn’t some click-bait title to try to get you to care about cybersecurity. A password you use has certainly been stolen, and statistically, more than one of your passwords has likely been compromised.

How this affects you depends on a number of factors, so let’s get into that, and talk about how you can protect your identity, your business data, your customers, and prevent a whole lot of problems.

How Do You Know My Password Has Been Stolen?

This is going to sound kind of cocky and presumptuous, but please hear me out.

It’s statistics.

Cybercriminals are always stealing credentials from online accounts. Someone will find their way into Netflix or Yahoo or a nationwide financial institution or virtually any other massive corporation with millions of users. They’ll harvest all of the usernames and passwords and post them on the dark web to brag about their accomplishments, and other cybercriminals can buy and sell these credentials and try to use them to cause trouble and steal.

And I’m not just talking about someone stealing your Netflix. These cybercriminals know that most people, an estimated 65 percent of Internet users, use the same password for multiple accounts. If they can get into your Netflix account, they can give your bank account a shot, or maybe your email account, which basically grants them access to everything.

These massive password dumps happen all the time, and last month, the world saw its biggest password dump yet, with nearly 10 billion passwords. 

There are an estimated 5 and a half billion internet users worldwide. The average user has around 100 online accounts, give or take, and with over half of all people using the same password across many of these accounts, there is a lot of crossover to be worried about here.

I’m no math and statistics guy, but some experts are saying that this means 1 in 8 accounts are potentially compromised. That number is extremely frightening.

If you use unique, strong, complex passwords for every single online account, you are much less likely to have to worry about this. If you sometimes reuse a password every so often, the risk factor goes way up.

If you don’t set multi-factor authentication on all your important accounts, then you are opening yourself up to even more risk.

Your Employees Could Put Your Business at Risk

While we’ve found that business owners are usually just as guilty as the average employee when it comes to bad cybersecurity hygiene, the fact that a business can have tens or hundreds of employees widens the risks even further. 

For example, if one hundred people access your line of business app with all your customer data, you have a hundred potential weak passwords that could be exploited. Businesses need to establish a culture of cybersecurity to encourage and educate users and provide all of the tools needed for a user to be secure, such as 2FA and password management systems.

Now is a Good Time to Focus on Security

Do it for your business, do it for yourself, your family, and for your customers. Committing to strong passwords and better cybersecurity hygiene isn’t necessarily expensive or challenging, it’s just about doing it. We can help, as well as help secure your business, because the investment is always going to be more cost-effective than the cure.

Get started with a network assessment. Call Computerware today at (703) 821-8200.