TechPunk

It seems like such a no-brainer… the more complex the password, the harder it is for unwanted visitors to gain access to your system. OH! How the users whine and complain when the password policy is upgraded to include a capital, a number and a special character.  It’s amazing how many clients of mine used the name of the company as the administrator password and all the users’ passwords were the same as the username!

Jaikumar Vijayan at Computerworld writes about a study of 32 million breached passwords:

A report released today by database security vendor Imperva Inc. serves as another reminder of why IT administrators need to enforce strong password policies on enterprise applications and systems.

Imperva’s report is based on an analysis of 32 million passwords that were exposed in a recent database intrusion at RockYou Inc., a developer of several popular Facebook applications. The passwords, which belonged to users who had registered with RockYou, had been stored by the company in clear text on the compromised database. The hacker responsible for the intrusion later posted the entire list of 32 million passwords on the Internet.

An analysis of that list provides the latest confirmation that a majority of users still don’t care about the strength of their passwords if they are left to choose them on their own.

You will never believe the most popular password is. Oh, wait… you probably can.