News Article - 18 April 2007
Category:
The majority of office workers would be willing to hand over the password to their computer for a flirtatious chat and a free bar of chocolate, a survey has shown.
According to research conducted by the organisers of the information security event Infosecurity Europe, 64 per cent of employees were found to give researchers using social engineering techniques their passwords.
The experiment was carried out at an IT trade show and at various London train stations.
Some 40 per cent of commuters gave their passwords when asked if they knew what the most common password was and asked to state their own, compared with 22 per cent of IT professionals.
Those who at first refused to divulge their passwords were then asked whether it was based on the name of a child, football team or pet, at which time 22 per cent of commuters and 42 per cent of IT workers gave their password.
Sam Jeffers, event manager for Infosecurity Europe 2007, said: "It just goes to show that we still have a long way to go in educating people about security policies and procedures, as the person trying to steal data from a company is just as likely to be an attractive young woman acting as a honey trap as a hacker using technology to find a way into a corporate network."
In the US, one firm is developing bio-security passwords which would mean that users could only log in if they type their user names and passwords with consistent speed.
Article keywords:
More industry news
Back to news home page »
Blog
RSS
Twitter 
LinkedIn