Josh Holloway nailed it when he made a warning about password security during his recent show, Intelligence. Though he’s not as snarky as his Lost character Sawyer, he still makes a strong warning to someone who he’s interrogating. He plays an high-tech intelligence operative who has been enhanced with a computer chip implanted in his brain and now has the ability to access anything on the internet.

“You should never use your personal password for your work password!” is what Josh’s character Gabriel says during an investigation. He warned against duplicating passwords for accounts – I believe his warning is good! With all the data security breaches in the marketplace, we all need to do practice password security on everything, all the time.

Let me make a couple assumptions that Holloway might ask you.  Please comment if you don’t agree.

• Are you lazy when it comes to passwords? We don’t want to take the time to look them up when asked.
• Do you go blank in your head each time when we are asked to create a new password? Do you just fill in whatever comes to mind, especially an old one in our heads?
• Do you have a central location to keep our passwords?

When talking about poor password usage, PC World said this: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2089244/the-25-worst-passwords-of-2013-password-gets-dethroned.html

“Weaker passwords are more susceptible to brute-force attacks, where hackers attempt to access accounts through rapid guessing. And when encrypted passwords are stolen, weaker ones are the first to fall to increasingly sophisticated cracking software. Splashtop suggests avoiding common words and phrases, and says that replacing letters with similar-looking numbers (such as “3” instead of “E) is not an effective strategy. Instead, consider using phrases of random words separated by spaces or underscores, and using different passwords, at least for your most sensitive accounts. Password management programs such as LastPass, KeePass and Splashdata’s own SplashID can also help, as you only have to remember a single master password.”

Worst passwords from 2013, according to Splashdata:

1. 123456
2. password
3. 12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. 123456789
7. 111111
8. 1234567
9. iloveyou
10. adobe123
11. 123123
12. admin
13. 1234567890
14. letmein
15. photoshop
16. 1234
17. monkey
18. shadow
19. sunshine
20. 12345
21. password1
22. princess
23. azerty
24. trustno1
25. 000000

If I’m describing your patterns for your passwords, your accounts and passwords are at high risk. At the top of the news these days is the data breach from Target stores – where someone stole umpteen million ID’s. We all need to be highly careful these days with our passwords and any kind of online accounts.

Recommendations?

• Take the time to create unique passwords
• Have an app or a system to track your accounts and passwords
• Don’t be lazy with passwords!