HR leads the way in poor password hygiene

HR pros tend to use astonishingly weak passwords, according to new research released by NordPass, which cautions that weak passwords leave hackers drooling.

Don’t believe it? Here are the top 10 passwords in HR:

1. password

2. Kenzie14

3. Company name123*

4. Company name1234*

5. welcome1

6. 123456

7. Company name*

8. linkedin

9. scooter

10. Password

* This password is the company’s actual name.

The researchers analyzed data from public third-party breaches that affected Fortune 500 companies. It included 15.6 million breaches and was categorized into 17 different industries.

The researchers looked into the top 10 passwords used in each industry, the percentage of unique passwords, and the number of data breaches affecting each industry.

While it’s well established that simple passwords are hazardous to businesses, that doesn’t always equate into smarter password usage.

For example, in February, a water treatment facility in Florida suffered a serious computer breach. It turned out the company used an unsupported version of Windows with no firewall and shared the same password, TeamViewer, among its employees.

And last December, SolarWinds suffered from a big data breach reportedly due to protecting one of their servers with the password “solarwinds123”.