Spanish
Madrid.- The passwords are the key, the first line of defense of digital identity, both in the personal and professional spheres, so it is important that they are secure and robust, but users still mostly use names and dates that are very easy to deduce or the most obvious sequences of the keyboard. Generalized failure.
The three most used passwords in the world are again '123456', '123456789' and '12345678', although 'password', 'qwerty123', 'qwerty1' or even credentials like 'secret' or '111111' have again sneaked into the top ten most used, when any of them - according to experts - can be deciphered in less than a second.
The same patterns are repeated worldwide, because the password '123456' is the most widespread in Spain, Germany, France, China, Taiwan or Saudi Arabia; or in countries with a greater digital culture, such as Estonia or Korea; and it is the second most recurring in the United States, where the also extremely vulnerable 'secret' prevails.
The data has been updated for six years by NordPass, a company specializing in password management, which compares the 200 most used credentials in a total of 44 countries from a gigantic database extracted from various public access sources, including those of the 'deep web', but without acquiring or buying personal data and using only statistical information and in no case the personal data of the users, the company assures.
Every first Thursday of May, 'World Password Day' is celebrated, an initiative promoted by several companies in the field of computer science and cybersecurity to raise awareness among users of the importance of using robust methods to guarantee unequivocal identification, since the weakness of credentials is behind almost half of the cyberattacks that occur.
Las empresas también suspenden
Personal users are suspended and companies are suspended, because the numerical sequence from 1 to 6 is also the most widespread in the world, followed by the sequence from 1 to 9, that from 1 to 8, the words 'secret', 'password', or some of the most obvious letter and number successions on the keyboard, such as 'qwerty123', 'qwerty1' or '111111', and among the most used and common ones, some are sneaked in, equally uningenious and decipherable in less than a second, such as '1q2w3e4r5t' or 'q1w2e3r4t5y6'.
Alicia Fernández, cybersecurity technician for Knowledge and Awareness for Citizenship at the National Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE) in Spain, has observed that behind passwords personal and confidential information is stored, such as personal, banking, email, private conversations, photos, videos or contacts, so that anyone who accessed them could impersonate that identity or commit fraud on behalf of another.
The head of INCIBE has insisted, in statements to EFE, on the importance of not using the same password for all accounts and of updating it periodically, and, aware of the difficulty of remembering all of them and of always complying with the recommendations, has suggested the convenience of using a password manager that stores them securely under a 'master' credential.
Your recommendations: choose long passwords, the longer the better, with at least 14 characters; use uppercase, lowercase, numbers and special characters (@, #, ¡ or *); do not include personal information (names, birthdays or phone numbers); and avoid common words from any language or keyboard sequences.
Tips for Building Uncrackable Passwords
The Global Consumer Operations Manager of Panda Security, Hervé Lambert, has warned that passwords are more than just a simple procedure to access an account or a network; "they are a deflector shield that protects us from the invisible threats lurking on the other side of the screen," he stated to EFE, and emphasized that dedicating a few minutes to create a strong credential is "an exercise in digital survival".
You may be interested in: World Password Day: a call to protect your digital life
The head of this computer security company has observed that artificial intelligence has allowed many advances in cybersecurity, such as early threat detection, attack prediction, or behavioral pattern analysis, but it has also "opened the door to an enemy faster, more efficient, and colder than ever", and has emphasized the importance of raising "true digital walls".
Your recommendation: build a story, with a long sentence, that only makes sense to the person who designs it (for example 'MyFirstCarWasAGolf88AndILovedIt!'), or use the first letter of each word of a long sentence that has meaning for the person who creates it (for example ''The Dune Universe is Better than Star Wars 1984!' can be transformed into 'EUdDeMqedSW1984!). These are, according to Lambert, unique passwords impossible to decipher for an artificial intelligence that tries to force access.
"Do we want a wooden door or a reinforced door to defend access to our information?", asks Eva María López Granero, Head of Communication in Cybersecurity for Society and SMEs at the cybersecurity company S2 Grupo, and has also emphasized that artificial intelligence is being used to protect but also to attack.
López Granero has pointed out to EFE that creating a strong password "is investing in security, privacy and peace of mind", and has suggested the importance of combining the password with two-factor authentication (facial recognition, an SMS or a verification code) to add a layer of security.
