We know what your Dropbox password is!

Actually we don’t, but 68 million Dropbox usernames and passwords have just been dumped onto the public internet (SEE HERE), so there’s a good chance we could get it if we wanted to. The hack, which Dropbox have confirmed, happened back in 2012, but the database containing the leaked usernames and passwords has just been made public.

So right now, and we mean RIGHT NOW, go and change your Dropbox password. Use a password manager tool, and make is long and complex. And then, even MORE importantly, change your passwords for EVERY OTHER WEB SERVICE you use that you used the same, or similar password for.

And therein lies the real risk of breaches like the Dropbox one – it’s not that someone may know your Dropbox password, because now you know and you can change that quickly and easily, but that they now know critical information about you that you have most likely used to secure other web services that you really do care about, like your online banking.

I’ve written before about my frustrations trying to explain this to my 70 something year old mother (who is actually very computer literate, sorry mom!). None of us can remember long and complex passwords, and especially not the volume that we need to these days (I have credentials for somewhere north of 500 web services). So what does everyone typically do, they revert to the simplest solution – choose one relatively easy password you can remember, and at best vary it by a couple of numbers or !! for different sites. Heed my warning, if this is you, your web identity will be compromised at some stage, and you WILL lose either information or actual hard currency that is valuable to you. (sorry mom).

So what’s the solution? Use a password manager, that will allow you to create and store different and complex passwords for all the web services you use. There are many out there (SEE FIVE BEST PASSWORD MANAGERS), and we’d recommend choosing one that has browser integration and mobile app/access to make your life easy. If you’re a business, look for enterprise features like 2 factor authentication and password sharing for teams that doesn’t necessarily give the employee access to the actual password but allows them to form fill automatically on sites. And then go through the painful process of changing ALL your passwords. Now.

If you’re a business that values your data, look no further than our CLOUDBOX SOLUTION. One of the issues with a service like Dropbox is the lack of control around auditing and data sharing – great for giving people quick and easy access to files, but once they have that access your data is basically gone. You don’t know who it’s been shared onto or how far download links have gone. CLOUDBOX solves that problem in a simple, secure and locally hosted product, with great auditing, control and management over your most important asset. Our IT Human team will help you out with your security management and policies too, so you can get on with the business of doing business.