Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) – where the UK spooks provide signals intelligence to the UK’s government, military and Military Intelligence and the Department for Digital, Media and Sport (DCMS) carried out their first UK Cyber Survey and the results didn’t make for great reading.

Apparently

• 42% of us Brits expect to lose money to on-line fraud
• 23.2 million worldwide victims of cyber breaches used 123456 as their password
• 15% say they know how to properly protect themselves from harmful on-line activity
• 33% rely on friends and family for help with their cyber security
• Young people are the most likely to be cyber aware, privacy concious and careful of the details they share on-line
• 61% of internet users check Social Media daily, 21% say they never look at it
• More than 50% use the same password for their email that they use elsewhere

Dr Ian Levy, NCSC Technical Director said “Using hard-to-guess passwords is a strong first step and we recommend combining three random but memorable words. Be creative and use words memorable to you, so people can’t guess your password.” whilst Margot James, DMCS Minister said “We shouldn’t make their (cyber criminals) lives easy so choosing a strong and separate password for your email account is a great practical step. “

Most Regularly Used Passwords

Rank	Password	Times Used	Password	Times Used
1.	123456	23.2m	ashley	432,276
2.	123756789	7.7m	michael	425,291
3.	qwerty	3.8m	daniel	368,227
4.	password	3.6m	jessica	324,125
5.	1111111	3.1m	charlie	308,939

It’s a shame that the top password list hasn’t really changed for at least 10 years – it shows how complacent a lot of us are with our on-line security.

I used to have 3 passwords, a simple one that I used really casually for newspaper sign-ups etc – name123 (not my real passwords, merely examples) a medium security one that I used on shopping sites, n@m3123 and a more secure one, used for banking etc – c3ler0n! (and all of the ones that I used feature on the Have I Been Pwned list).

About 5 or more years ago I switched to a Password Manager. I have 801 log-ins and 801 different passwords. All of them are at least 16 random characters long and comprise upper & lower case letters, numbers and symbols (where permitted).

My Password database is stored securely in the cloud and is replicated on my PC, Phone and Tablet and accessible from my Chromebook too. I use LastPass but others exist and here’s a review of some of the top ones.

As you can see, I do my best to stay on top of my security but if you feel adrift, or need some help, just give me a call on 01793 238020 or email andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk for a free chat.