Observed every first Thursday of May each year. Security expert Mark Burnett in his book, Perfect Passwords first recommended World Password Day. In 2013, Intel Security officially recommended that every first Thursday in May be designated as World Password Day.
It is a day that’s set aside to remind us that we need to do an assessment of our passwords and develop better password habits. The world we live in is interconnected and increasingly more digital, making passwords are even more important than they have ever been.
Experts recommend that we do the following regularly;
- Use a password of min 8 character and uses several different combinations of characters
- Use two-factor authentication
- Don’t store passwords on your computer or phone
- Periodically remove temporary internet files
- Ensure that your router is password secured
- Log out of banking accounts when you’re done with them
Here are some facts about a password that are quite surprising;
- Using 1991 cracker technology, it would take over 6,000-years to crack a random eight-character password with random symbols and letters.
- Almost half of the organizations store administrative passwords in spreadsheets or Word documents.
- In 2013, there were 130 million accounts that were stolen in the 2013 Adobe Hack.
- Of those 130 million stolen accounts, 3.2 million had passwords like “123456,” Password,” or “12345678.”
- The minimum password length to avoid brute-force cracking is 13 characters.
- An eight-character password using only upper or lower-case characters has over 200+ billion potential password combinations.
- In 2017, 90% of all phishing emails carried some form of ransomware.
- That same eight-character password can be cracked in 2021, in about 9-years.
- Approximately a third of all phishing emails get opened by the receiver.
- The list of the top ten passwords used over the past five years has hardly changed.
To spread the word about this, you can also use the hashtag #WorldPasswordDay on your social media accounts.