Use of passwords makes companies vulnerable to cyberattacks
In the year 2020, when the world was already grappling with the onset of the pandemic, the business world was shaken by a series of sophisticated cyberattacks. And as the year came to a close, one of the worst cybersecurity breaches of the 21st century hit with the SolarWinds hack. This supply chain breach was a major event not only because a business entity was affected but also because it shook the US government agencies. Hackers exploited a weakness in the cybersecurity provider's network monitoring software, allowing them to laterally penetrate firms that used that program and obtain access to their email exchanges. While the actual root cause was not validated, current and former SolarWinds employees claim that the primary cause of the supply chain attack was a “weak password”. An intern had been using the password "solarwinds123," and that password was publicly accessible via a misconfigured GitHub repository.
You might assume that a user choosing such a short password is unusual, but regrettably, improper password practices are widespread in many organizations. A recent report by NordPass suggests that "123456", "qwerty", and "password" continue to top lists of the most widely used passwords. And when these passwords are reused across several accounts, an attacker can easily gain access to sensitive company information. The study also found that 83% of the user passwords can be cracked in less than a second.
User credentials for applications are the keys to your organization's data kingdom, and they must be kept secure. This encompasses not only educating users about good password practices but also enforcing them across the organization. Failure to do so opens the door to bad actors attempting to access your corporate data through an account compromise assault.
A report by Verizon highlights that almost 80% of data breaches last year involved the use of compromised user credentials.
Most organizations enforce password policies like adding numbers and characters to passwords as well as changing passwords every 30 to 45 days. While this might seem very secure, it is not really effective. No matter how strict password policies an organization imposes, password creation is still done by users and thus prone to vulnerabilities. Users have to create passwords for a lot of applications, and also need to change them periodically as per company password policies. So, for users, it is not practically possible to remember all these passwords. To make their lives easy, they create guessable passwords that follow some pattern, such as Jan@123, Feb@123. They also tend to write these passwords in notepads and use the same password across different applications. While this process weighs lightly on the user, its security implications for the organization are graver than they can imagine.
\Why does the use of passwords make companies vulnerable to cyberattacks
Several organizations become victims of data breaches and malicious threats, and it is their responsibility to develop effective solutions to secure not only their company data, but also their customers' data. In fact, one of the most susceptible ways of user authentication is passwords. When a hacker discovers or guesses your password, they can easily get access to your accounts.
Some of the most common password-related vulnerabilities for companies include:
- Credential stuffing: This cyberattack involves a hacker attempting to reuse the credentials that were compromised in an earlier breach to log in to another app or website. In some instances, hackers grab millions of emails and passwords linked to them from a compromised website. They then utilize an account checker to try these email/password combinations on a huge number of other websites, attempting to log in to any accounts that use the same credentials. Using the same password for many accounts exposes you to a credential stuffing attack.
- Phishing/Keyloggers/Sniffers: Attackers target company employees by misleading them into typing their credentials onto malicious websites they control, infiltrating vulnerable, unencrypted networks, or installing malware/hardware to steal credentials. These approaches make it relatively simple for attackers to acquire passwords without brute-forcing them.
- Brute Force: This approach employs automated tools to generate billions of passwords and test them until the correct one is found. Online brute force attacks are often blocked by lockout policies, but offline cracking (using stolen password hashes) remains highly effective.
- Insecure Passwords: Because users must generate their own passwords, they often create weak or guessable ones. Fraudsters exploit these patterns to crack them easily.
- Password Reuse and Compromised Passwords: Users frequently reuse passwords across multiple systems, so a breach of one site can expose accounts elsewhere.
Overcoming the false sense of security in password protection
The issue is that today's digital environment exposes authentication systems to more vulnerabilities than ever before, and those vulnerabilities are increasing at an exponential rate. Passwords still remain one of the most vulnerable links in the security of businesses globally. Besides having a lack of uniqueness, passwords carry a multitude of other security drawbacks. Therefore, relying on passwords as your company’s security shield would invite malicious attackers to feast on your sensitive data, financial standing, and reputation.
Zaperon understands this threat vulnerability landscape and offers passwordless access to applications that enterprises use. Our proprietary technology aims to make organizations password-free. Users don’t have to enter a password to access an application. When passwords are eliminated, you don’t have to worry about phishing attacks. Our service structure is built on AI-based continuous risk analysis of user behavior to anticipate security threats while offering a seamless single sign-on experience. Irrespective of remote, on-premise working mode, user devices, or operating systems, our passwordless model enforces security and authorizes application access to impede malicious attempts.
