WASHINGTON – A new study finds real estate professionals rely on common, easy-to-guess passwords, phrases and formats that could put their information and that of their clients at greater risk.
Recent research from password management firm NordPass reveals the most common passwords used among workers in 20 industries, including real estate. The study found that real estate pros most often incorporate their full company name, the company’s email domain or part of the company’s name into their passwords.
The NordPass study also found that workers in the real estate sector rely on common passwords like “password,” “123456” and “default.” The study found the following passwords are most commonly used in real estate:
- Part of the company’s name
- Company’s email domain
- Part of the company’s name + “1”
- Password
- Indiana1
- Aaron431
- 123456
- Company name
- default
NordPass says companies need to strengthen their passwords to avoid risk. Passwords should consist of random combinations of at least 20 upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and special characters. Also, researchers urge users to enable multifactor authentication for their accounts, which, besides a password login, also sends an SMS or email code to verify security. Password managers can be used to store all passwords in one place.