52% of users reuse their passwords

Most Internet users these days still haven’t fully understood the importance of establishing effective mechanisms to create secure passwords. In order to understand how complex the risk is, researchers at Virginia Tech University and Dashlane analysts have carried out one of the largest empirical studies on password reuse and modification patterns.

After examining a database of over 28 million users and their 61 million passwords, they have uncovered an alarming figure: 52% of the users studied have the same passwords (or very similar and easily hackable ones) for different services. The harm that this bad habit can cause in a business environment are quite clear, especially if there is a security breach in the company that reveals a password that is already in use, or has been slightly modified, and is then used again on other websites or business tools. With this information, the attackers could endanger the security of numerous services in the workplace.

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