Warning to East Midlands bosses: Could your password be guessed from your digital footprint?
A surprising number of passwords can be guessed by cyber criminals studying someone’s digital footprint, a local data security expert has warned.
“The internet never forgets content you posted years ago,” said Glen Palmer-Barnes from Eastwood based Ace IT Solutions, “even though you do.”
“Cyber criminals use a range of tools to try to access a business’s accounts. Automated tools that brute force try thousands of weak passwords are popular.
“But so is social engineering, where they will study a person’s digital footprint to look for ideas. You might consider using your childhood dog’s name to be a safe password, but it probably isn’t.
“Especially when you did a Facebook post 7 years ago about how much you miss your dog… including its name.”
Glen explained that everyone has a digital footprint – information about them that can be accessed by anyone online.
Bosses of local companies might be careful about what they post today. But cyber criminals will look up content from when they were much younger.
“It’s important to use a different password for each account. The National Cyber Security Centre advises using three random words to create a longer difficult to guess password.”, Glen added.
“You can also use software called a password manager to remember these passwords for you, and fill in the login boxes across all of your devices.”
Ace IT Solutions was formed in 2014 and specialises in supporting local businesses in the Nottingham, Derby and the East Midlands.
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