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We want to save you some cash and share some great tech tips with you about safeguarding your information. We live in a digital age where virtual meetings and data are exchanged more rapidly and often with unknown risks. In light of this week’s Bitcoin 2021 event in the popular Wynwood neighborhood of Miami, the importance and need for password security is very present in our minds. We have gathered some facts and tips regarding data protection to help you keep your data secure so you can focus on what’s important.

Bitcoin Owners Learn the Importance of Securing Private Keys and Passwords

If you have followed the Bitcoin news over the last few years, you’ve likely heard about the many people that can’t access their fortunes because they have misplaced the digital keys to the wallet that holds their Bitcoin. While most sites and financial institutions can reset passwords or provide clues to help an account’s owner gain access to their funds, Bitcoin does not have a company to provide or even store users’ passwords. The Bitcoin owners who have lost their private keys sit in frustration with nobody that can help them. According to The New York Times, “Of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, around 20 percent — currently worth around $140 billion — appear to be in lost or otherwise stranded wallets, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis.”

Lesson Learned: We Could Do Better When Selecting Passwords

As cyber-criminals have gotten more sinisterly savvy and many organizations make users jump through several hoops to provide extra protection for their user passwords, users could take more precautions when it comes to passwords. If you think you know everything there is to know about passwords, you will want to read on. We were quite surprised with some of the facts we learned about passwords, and think some of these facts might surprise you as well.

• In the 2013 Adobe Hack, 130 million accounts were stolen
• 2 million user accounts worldwide use “123456” as a password
• 7 million user accounts worldwide use “123456789” as a password
• Sadly, other popular passwords are “qwerty”, “password”, and “1111111”
• The list of the top 10 passwords used over the past 5 years has hardly changed
• 59% of people use the same password everywhere
• 90% of passwords can be cracked in less than 6 hours
• Almost half of organizations store administrative passwords in Excel or Word documents
• 18% of employees share their passwords with others
• The minimum password length to avoid brute-force cracking is 13 characters
• An 8-character password using only upper or lower-case characters has over 200+ billion potential password combinations
• As of 2016, approximately a third of all phishing emails were opened by the receiver and 90% of phishing emails carried some form of ransomware
• Two-thirds of people use no more than 2 passwords for all of their online accounts

Changing your passwords often can be an arduous task and although people have been advised to use a two-step authentication process or some other extra step to keep their passwords safe, most do not. For those who work in coworking or shared office spaces, other precautions should be taken to preserve sensitive member data. Coworking spaces attract a variety of different business professionals from corporations to mid-size and small companies including tech entrepreneurs and startups looking for long-term savings on monthly leases as well as independent contractors and freelancers. With this amount of people working alongside each other, sometimes on the same devices, and coming and going at their own paces, it would take only one user with malicious intent to compromise the information of an entire coworking/flexible office space membership and it may even go unnoticed. As a coworking space, at CoSuite, we know we need to take additional precautions to reduce security risks and do so every day.

At CoSuite, we are committed to keeping our members informed and up to date on the latest news that could impact them while offering welcoming spaces that encourage movement and inspire new ideas. If you are looking for ways to change up your workspace, come to one of our locations in Boca Raton or Brickell-Miami anytime in June for a full day at a special promotional rate of $25 with access to our high-speed Internet, secured access, and free use of private phone/meditation rooms.

Have any questions about this promotion or any of CoSuite flexible workspaces? Contact us today!