Here's Your Friendly Reminder to Check Your Passwords

The brazen heist at Paris' most popular museum last month startled art lovers around the world and became a hot topic — not only for the massive theft of the French crown jewels, but also for the online sleuthing to determine the identity of the dapper "fedora man" who (spoiler alert) turned out to be a teenager.

If robbers could break into the Louvre in broad daylight and escape with more than $100 million in jewels, what does that mean for the rest of us?

We think it's a good time to conduct your own security check of your marketing department. While you probably don't need to secure a second-floor window in a gallery, you should review the passwords your team is using for all your tech and platform tools. If you're asking what this has to do with the Louvre, we're getting there. As reported in SecurityInfoWatch, France's National Cybersecurity Agency accessed the museum's video surveillance by cracking the comically obvious password: "LOUVRE."

To be fair, during Louvre president Laurence des Cars' testimony before the French Senate last month, we learned that the eponymous password wasn't to blame; rather, audits revealed "serious shortcomings" in the museum's security systems.

Before you throw up your hands and say "Not my problem" and punt password duties over to IT, remember that, as a leader, you're responsible for your team. A responsible leader ensures everyone uses strong passwords and a password manager. After all, your team likely works on a variety of platforms in your tech stack and manages an incredible amount of customer data. We don't need to tell you about all the bad things a data breach can do to your brand's reputation.

If you think your team is innocent until proven guilty of messy password management, consider a recent study of U.S. employees, which revealed that only 30% of employees use password managers, 42% have accessed sensitive company info on personal devices without IT approval, and 78% are not fully confident in spotting advanced phishing attacks.

Bottom line? Don't make assumptions — before the end of the year, schedule a password check with your team and make sure nobody is using "12345" to guard all your first-party data.