In today’s digital landscape, strong password security is more critical than ever. Cybercriminals continually refine their tactics, leveraging stolen credentials from data breaches to compromise accounts. Organizations must adopt advanced password security measures to protect user data and maintain compliance with industry standards.
Most security-conscious organizations have password restrictions that prevent users from picking simple passwords. They typically have “strong password requirements” with a minimum length that includes a variety of different types of characters.
The common recommendation for a strong password was complexity. Password complexity in the form of more than 12 characters with a mix of numbers, symbols, and upper and lowercase letters.
This combination produces an astounding 333,061,772,956,016,240,000,000 password options.
That mind-boggling set of choices could be increased further, but would still fail to account for one simple fact: Cybercriminals have access to extensive databases of previously exposed passwords, enabling them to refine their password-cracking methods using known password patterns and dictionary attacks.
Real-world passwords exposed in previous data breaches quickly get published on the dark web and funneled into cybercriminals’ hands. Attackers utilize credential-stuffing techniques and automated tools to exploit reused or predictable passwords. Since many users tend to create passwords based on familiar words or slight variations of common phrases, brute-force attacks and dictionary-based password-cracking tools can quickly identify vulnerable credentials, which means even a 30-character password with complex characters wouldn’t be secure.
Even a 30 character password isn’t secure if it was previously compromised.
This is why the National Institute of Standards and Technology recommends avoiding overly complex composition rules that frustrate users and screening new passwords against known compromised password lists.
There are a variety of new technologies, from multi-factor authentication to biometrics, that improve authentication. But as long as the password remains a critical security layer, organizations must help users pick passwords that are strong and are not compromised.
Since users have no way of knowing whether their chosen password has been compromised in a previous data breach, organizations must take proactive measures. Enzoic provides
You can check a sample password at our secure site here:
Test out variations of passphrases and passwords to come up with a secure password for each site.
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