A recent survey conducted on IT leaders by Hitachi ID discovered that half of them are found storing passwords on shared document files, triggering security and privacy concerns.
Hitachi, which recently entered into Identity Management, conducted a poll to take the feedback from over 100 IT leaders such as CIOs and CTOs working in companies operating in EMEA and North American regions.
And to its surprise, Hitachi ID discovered that half of the tech people were not following the basics while securing their digital passwords.
Hitachi estimates each professional is nowadays dealing with applications that need password access and so they are required to store at least 70-100 passwords in their work environments.
However, most of them are found storing their passwords in centralized platforms or shared docs, leaving access to those files to anyone in their work group.
Such laxity in storing passwords often leads to security issues, such as data steal, cyber attacks or data destruction.
For instance, a corporate employee working for a reputed IT company destroyed about 21GB of data, including 20k files and almost 3500 directories to retaliate his sudden job removal. And investigations later revealed that the data wipeout was conducted from shared and backed up folders hinting a recovery next to impossible, thereafter.
Surprisingly, about 29% of respondents admitted in the Hitachi ID study they experienced a loss of access to systems after an employee was fired from their work ecosystem.
