Are you an over-sharing social media user? Do you have access to sensitive information at work? If you answered yes to both these questions, you are a prime target for black hat hackers who will guess your password to break into your company’s network. Here’s how they do it.

How Criminal Hackers Guess Your Work Password

Savvy cybercriminals first find your LinkedIn account or some other evidence that you’re a staff member, security professional, or executive at your organization, which they want to hack. They search LinkedIn for the company they wish to access, then look for employees of that firm to find your account. Next, they locate and browse through your Facebook account where you share some piece of personal information such as your dog’s name; we’ll call him Spike for this illustration.

These black hat hackers then try every password combination using Spike such as Spike123, Spike456, 123Spike, 456Spike, and so on until they gain access to one of your accounts somewhere. Once they succeed, they will try your password on every account where you might have access at work.

What Cyberthugs Do With Your Data And What It Costs You

The more access you have to sensitive data, the more access these cyberthugs will get. They will eventually steal your company data and sell it, use it in other attacks, or publish it openly on the web. They might also destroy it and any backups you have, so you lose any value that rests in the data, too. These outcomes can add up to millions if not billions of dollars in losses.

What You Can Do About It

If you have to use passwords, base them on information that no one can get. Suggest to your company that they may want to look into Multifactor Authentication (MFA) as many companies are doing, which adds one-time passcodes on your smartphone that virtually no one can know or access.

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