The UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) revealed that a huge number of Brits use rather too simple passwords such as simple numbers or their favourite Premier League football team names among others that are highly prone to be hacked.
Through its first ever ‘UK cyber survey’, the agency found out that 42% of Brits are concerned of losing their money to online fraud. It claimed that less than half of the users do not always use a strong, separate password for their primary email account.
According to the agency’s survey, only 15% of users said that they know a great deal about how to guard themselves from harmful cyber activity.
The survey found that 89% use the internet for online purchases, with 39% of them making them on a weekly basis.
It was found that one in three users depends to some extent on friends and family for help regarding cyber security, while young users have been shown to be more probable to be privacy conscious and careful of what details they share through the internet.
NCSC said that 61% of internet users track social media daily. However, 21% of the users said that they never look at social media.
In the survey, the agency came to know that 70% of the users always use PINs and passwords for their smart phones and tablets.
NCSC believes that the results of the UK Cyber Survey showed exploitable gaps in the personal security knowledge of the users.
For instance, the agency said that breach analysis found that 23.2 million victim accounts across the world had 123456 as their passwords.
Having published the global password risk list to reveal passwords already known to hackers, NCSC has urged Brits to undertake measures to stay safe online.
NCSC Technical Director Dr Ian Levy said: “We understand that cyber security can feel daunting to a lot of people, but the NCSC has published lots of easily applicable advice to make you much less vulnerable.
“Password re-use is a major risk that can be avoided – nobody should protect sensitive data with something that can be guessed, like their first name, local football team or favourite band.
“Using hard-to-guess passwords is a strong first step and we recommend combining three random but memorable words. Be creative and use words memorable to you, so people can’t guess your password.”
source governmentcomputing
Industry: Cyber Security News