What can be learned from LinkedIn

There has been another round of data breaches. While this is nothing new, the information that has been gleaned from this breach should give us all pause. While hopefully this does not apply to you, if it does you need to act immediately, if just to be within PCI compliance.
Many of you use LinkedIn which was one of those hit. They were also hit back in 2012 and it appears very little has changed with their password security. When the breach in 2012 occurred the most common passwords were 123456 and linkedin with password coming in third as claimed by Leaked Source, a paid search engine for hacked data. In 2016 alas, the top three were 12345678, linkedin, and password.
This shows two things, first that your everyday citizen wants to keep an easy to remember password and that trumps security for them. Second is that linkedIn and other sites like it have not done much of anything to increase security, which is why the first is allowed to continue. Now granted with 167,000,000 accounts it is not going to be easy to update all of those passwords at once but you know the old saying “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.” It appears that both the users and LinkedIn should be feeling shame.
Don’t be like LinkedIn. If you use a password like 12345678 change it NOW! If you have a site that allows users to log in, make your users up their password security. The password is the first, and sometimes only, line of defense against data thieves and criminals. If you need help coming up with a strong password there are numerous password generators on the internet, one you can try is http://passwordsgenerator.net.