On 2 June at the University of Manchester, ICSA's Northwest
branch held an event to highlight the risks in the cyber
environment and what we can do to protect ourselves and our
organisations.
Matthew Parker, Senior Manager at Grant Thornton and specialist
in cyber security and data forensics had us all fascinated, not to
mention somewhat concerned, by the ease with which passwords can be
broken:
- Passwords such as 'password' and '12345678',
which are the most commonly-used passwords, take one second to
break.
- An example of a good password is 50Ducks&99Donuts which
would take approximately eight years to break.
He gave many examples of companies whose systems have been
hacked and sensitive client or customer data stolen. Matthew
explained that there need not be a specific motive behind the
attacks and that organisations should not rely on one single method
of protection, but use a multi-layered approach. Despite encrypting
their customers' passwords,
