The importance of password hygiene

Let’s talk about password hygiene.

As you may have seen in the news, it was reported that the “Mother of all Breaches” (MOAB) credential database was discovered on an unsecured Elasticsearch Cluster in the cloud. This was the largest leak of sensitive login data in history, compiling 26 billion records across 3,800 separate breaches across a broad range of services used by consumers and businesses alike. This breach contained an astonishing 12Tb of data. Some of the spaces that were involved ranged from X (formerly Twitter) to LinkedIn all the way to Adobe.

To be clear, this isn’t a new breach of some company or entity, rather it’s a compilation of thousands of breaches assembled all in one place and easily searchable by anyone. It is anticipated that new cyber fraud will be attempted as it is now possible to draw connections of user data across many separate breaches.

How do breaches happen?

Breaches can happen on many levels of the cyberworld. Social media is a playground for cybercriminals. They can easily search you, where you work, go to school, when your birthday is, etc. Any information may be the key that they need to link information together.

 

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