Cybercriminals typically rely on weak passwords to break into online accounts of unsuspecting victims, which often leads to severe consequences. But despite understanding the importance of strong passwords as a critical security best practice, for most users the ease of memorizing only a few passwords and reusing them everywhere outweighs the increased security risk.
According to our 2021 global report on cybersecurity and online behaviors, slightly more than half of the over 10,000 consumers surveyed use either one single or a few passwords across their online accounts, and approximately a quarter are using one simple password for all of their online accounts.
Easy pickings for cybercriminals
The report notes that consumers feel worried about online threats, including financial fraud and impersonation on a social network. However, their actions don’t match their concerns – based on behaviors related to security products usage, password usage across platforms and account details sharing, almost 60% of the polled individuals are considered “exposed”. As cybercriminals are taking advantage of poor cybersecurity practices: 61% of users have experienced at least one threat in the past year, with scam messages/calls on mobile (36%) and phishing (23%) occurring most frequently.
Weak passwords provide an easy avenue for cybercriminals to exploit; they can sell this information on the dark web or use it to launch further attacks. If passwords are simple,…
