People Keep Using Poor Passwords and It’s Becoming a Problem

It’s long been known that using weak and easy-to-guess passwords presents a significant cybersecurity risk. Despite great efforts for improving online security by implementing measures such as 2FA and requiring users to choose strong passwords, people are still using poor passwords.

Let’s explore why that might be the case and why it’s important for companies to tackle this issue and educate employees and customers on the importance of good password-setting habits.

The Tendency to Use Weak Passwords

With hundreds of different accounts linked with a single email, people can’t remember so many different passwords. Around 13% of internet users use the same password for all accounts to tackle this issue. A little over half use the same password for most of their accounts.

Even if your password is quite secure (if it has special characters, capital letters, numbers, etc.), that isn’t enough. If that password is reused, it only takes one account to get compromised to put all accounts at risk.

But the sheer scale of accounts isn’t the only reason people choose weak passwords. After all, the tendency to go for easy-to-guess passwords dates back to when there were only one or two accounts that people had to worry about.

This tendency comes from a general lack of awareness of cybersecurity threats and their risks. To avoid forgetting their password, people go for combinations that are very easy to remember. However, they fail to consider that a hacker can easily guess them too.

Using Weak Passwords In the Workplace

It’s one thing to use weak passwords for your personal accounts, but doing so in your workplace can cause tremendous damage to the entire company. Unfortunately, 1 in 5 enterprises still has weak passwords. Even Fortune 500 companies continue to have this problem.

Weak passwords are extremely risky for companies that handle sensitive data such as customer information, financial reports, employee data, and more. One breach can have serious financial and reputational consequences.

Companies must start investing in their cybersecurity efforts and educating their employees about all the cybersecurity risks out there, including using weak passwords. Without doing so, it’s unlikely that the trend of hacked business accounts and data will stop anytime soon.

The good news is that cybersecurity awareness is slowly rising, and more companies have started utilizing password management software to help them store their passwords securely and generate strong passwords that are impossible to guess.

The Challenge of Having Strong Passwords

Perhaps the biggest challenge of having strong passwords for all accounts is remembering them. Often, the fear of getting locked out from their accounts prompts people to choose passwords that are easy to remember.

This is another area where password management software can be the solution, as it’s capable of storing multiple passwords in one place so that users can easily select the account they want to access.

Final Thoughts

Weak passwords are one of the oldest yet still most relevant cybersecurity risks out there. Whether it’s for their personal or professional accounts, people can’t be bothered to memorize complicated passwords, so they opt for ones that are easy to remember yet very risky.

Organizations must educate employees on the importance of having strong passwords and the risks associated with them. To make using strong passwords a lesser challenge, users can utilize password management software to store all account passwords in one place.