The recently-published Trustwave 2012 Global Security Report
details the current threats to user data and identifies the
vulnerabilities that persist within organizations. The
statistics were generated from their investigation of about 300
breaches across 18 countries. They also analyzed the usage and
weakness trends of more than 2 million real-world passwords used
within corporate information systems. The verdict? After an
initial foothold in a system (via malware and other threat
vectors), 80% of security incidents were due to the use of weak
administrative passwords. Yes, that's correct: 80 percent. From
weak passwords. "The use of weak and/or default credentials
continues to be one of the primary weaknesses exploited by
attackers for internal propagation," the report comments. "This
is true for both large and small organizations, and largely due
to poor administration." They found that writing down passwords
is still prevalent in the workplace, particularly in
organizations that implement complexity requi