RockYou.com is a social –gaming website – and recently hackers stole 32 million passwords and usernames and posted them on the Web. Imperva, a security firm made an analysis and found that 365,000 people had used either “123456” or “password”, whilst most common choices were just words in the dictionary.

Hackers these days commonly use automated attacks, which will very quickly find names listed in dictionaries or commonly used phrases. There are various scanners and devices that can be purchased which help - but they can be expensive – but often the best defence is to choose more secure passwords.

One way is to turn a sentence, which is not commonly used, into a password – for example “Too much food and wine will make you sick” becomes “2mf&wwmUs”.

The trick – and it is not always easy  - is to find a password, which is not a well known word or phrase, which is easy to remember but hard to guess,

So the questions for you are:

a) “Do you need to change any or all of your passwords?”

b) Would it be prudent to review the risks that could have a significant detrimental affect on your business ? If so please contact JFP on 01344 872230.