Study Shows 30% of CEOs Have Been “Pwned”, Passwords Exposed

 Email This Post

Email exposure study also shows 81% of the world’s top CEOs have had their personal information exposed in spam lists or leaked marketing databases

Helsinki, Finland – October 25, 2017 — /BackupReview.info/ — Nearly one in three major CEOs has been “pwned” using their company email address, according to a new F-Secure study of CEO email exposure. In other words, a service they access using their company email has been hacked and the password they use for that service has leaked. Without proper password practices, this potentially increases their susceptibility to targeted attacks.

The study, CEO Email Exposure: Passwords and Pwnage, delves into known company email addresses used by top executives from more than 200 of the biggest companies in ten countries. Researchers compared those addresses with F-Secure’s database of credentials leaked from breaches of online services. Among other findings:

• The most common previously breached services for CEOs to link their company email with are LinkedIn and Dropbox.
• The countries with the highest percentages of CEOs who’ve linked their email to these breached services are Denmark, at 62%, and the Netherlands, at 43%.
• 81% of CEOs have had their email address and other personal information such as birthdates, addresses, and phone numbers exposed online in the form of spam lists or leaked marketing databases.
• The countries with the greatest level of CEO info exposed on spam and marketing lists are the Netherlands, the UK and the USA, all at 95%.
• Just 18% of CEOs have no leaks associated with their email address.

“This study once again underscores the importance of proper password hygiene,” said Erka Koivunen, Chief Information Security Officer at F-Secure. “The CEO’s credentials may have leaked even when they have done nothing wrong. We can assume that a many of the services we’ve created an account in have already been compromised and the old passwords are out there on the internet, just waiting for targeted, motivated attackers to try them against other services.”

By using poor password habits, a top executive is putting their own accounts at risk – but not only that, company data as well. According to the 2016 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 63% of confirmed data breaches involved weak, default, or stolen passwords.* A breach caused by unauthorized use of a CEO’s credentials would be difficult to spot for most companies, who are ill-prepared to handle breaches, according to data from F-Secure risk management assessments.

Using a unique, strong password for each online account is fundamental to keeping hackers at bay – and experts recommend using a password manager to make it seamless and easy. F-Secure Password Protection, the only available password manager that comes integrated with endpoint security clients, is a brand new component of F-Secure Protection Service for Business. It will be released on November 1.

For more details, password advice from a white hat hacker, and to find out when CEOs should link social accounts with their company email, download the full report, CEO Email Exposure: Passwords and Pwnage.

*Source: 2016 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, https://goo.gl/xWU9Nb

More information:
REPORT – CEO Email Exposure: Passwords and Pwnage — https://goo.gl/hwoZqc

About F-Secure
Nobody knows cyber security like F-Secure. For three decades, F-Secure has driven innovations in cyber security, defending tens of thousands of companies and millions of people. With unsurpassed experience in endpoint protection as well as detection and response, F-Secure shields enterprises and consumers against everything from advanced cyber attacks and data breaches to widespread ransomware infections. F-Secure’s sophisticated technology combines the power of machine learning with the human expertise of its world-renowned security labs for a singular approach called Live Security. F-Secure’s security experts have participated in more European cyber crime scene investigations than any other company in the market, and its products are sold all over the world by over 200 broadband and mobile operators and thousands of resellers.

Founded in 1988, F-Secure is listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Ltd.

f-secure.com | twitter.com/fsecure | facebook.com/f-secure

F-Secure Media Relations
Melissa Michael
+358 45 209 3595

Source: F-Secure

Tags: F-Secure