Most organisations still only exploit the password as the main authentication method.
It goes without saying that a large part of cybercrime's efforts are directed in this direction, with thousands of attacks involving the theft of credentials.
Specops, every year, it researches and publishes reports on the subject, highlighting both uncomfortable data and best practices to be applied.
Among other things, their 2024 report informs us that:
- the classic '123456"is the most common compromised password;
- do not even keep the long passwords (31.1 million of the hacked passwords analysed were longer than 16 characters);
- only the 50% of organisations scan for compromised passwords more than once a month.
- as soon as the 12% of organisations uses an authentication method other than a password.
As can be seen, the password is both an everyday tool, but also one of the most vulnerable.
In the near future, therefore, the approach will be Zero Trust, with an increasingly widespread passwordless trend (based, for instance, on multi-factor authentication or biometric data).
In the meantime, here is the need to dedicate an entire day to password awareness, to remind us to take care of our data and the tools that protect them.
