Another reminder to not reuse passwords for multiple accounts

Another reminder to not reuse passwords for multiple accounts

By Sophia Hunt with Curo Technology

Account information from over 26 billion accounts has recently been discovered by security researchers, marking one of the largest—if not the largest—data breach lists to date. Some of the platforms included in the data leak include LinkedIn, Canva, MySpace, Adobe, and Twitter (now called “X”), just to name a few. Although this data is primarily from past breaches, this “Mother of All Breaches” contains information that has never been seen before. Cybernews, the original source of the article on this data breach, provides a dedicated checker to assess potential data exposure, accessible at https://cybernews.com/personal-data-leak-check/ . The Cybernews team is continuing to update this tool as they get more information as not all of the individual accounts are searchable yet. This breach most likely affects many the population as many people reuse passwords for multiple websites. Instead of reusing passwords, here are some best practices to create unique, but memorable, passwords for each account.

• Use passphrases instead of passwords. The inclusion of characters, symbols, and unique ways of spelling make passphrases more secure.
  • Strong Example: BlackCatsAreMyFavorite!
  • Stronger Example: BlakKatsRMyFavrite!
  • Even stronger Example: Example: Bl@kKat$RMyFavr1t3!
• Another way to easily create unique passwords is to stick to a similar format for each password. A format should contain at least 3 categories plus some sort of symbol.
  • Categories can include things like food, objects, animals, numbers, colors, etc. Within these categories you can create formats like objectcolorfood to create the password table&OrangeRaspberry or foodanimalnumber to create the password Cookie%tiger79
  • As much as possible try not to have these categories relate to each other, for example don’t do something like YearDragon2024!, having an abstract password makes it harder for a bad actor to guess your password
• Password managers are also great tools to utilize, having a password manager allows you to create stronger, more complicated passwords, without fear of forgetting them
  • When looking into a password manager make sure to contact an IT professional to help you make the right choice for a password manager based on your needs

Link to the original article: https://cybernews.com/security/billions-passwords-credentials-leaked-mother-of-all-breaches/