iloveyou
123456789
111111
admin
qwerty
Can you guess what these have in common?
According to cybersecurity researchers, these ranked among the top 10 most commonly used passwords in 2025. They may be easy to remember, but they are also incredibly easy to guess for hackers.
At the start of 2026, it’s time to reconsider how safe you keep your business, and the first question to ask your team is: How safe is your password?
Most people may argue that their password is more complex than it appears. But in reality, when it comes to passwords, the human mind lacks creativity. Aside from the obvious examples above, countless passwords feature elements that are a child’s play to guess for anybody who does a little research on social media:
- Location-specific elements are best avoided, including sports teams or hometowns, which are easy to find online
- Birthdays and names are no challenge for hackers
- Capital letters at the start of the password and numbers and special characters at the end (Password1! is more obvious than you think)
From a business perspective, it’s important to encourage the team to think a little longer when it comes to creating a secure password. In fact, it is a lot safer to use a passPHRASE instead of a passWORD. The reason for it is simple: A full phrase is longer and harder to guess, unless you use a known quote (which you shouldn’t do).
But, passphrases are only one aspect of the multi-sided challenge that businesses face in ensuring secure access.
Using a Password Manager
Password managers such as LastPass are no novelty anymore, and they are becoming an essential element of cybersecurity. Sure, creating passwords that hackers can’t guess easily is the first step. But in a realistic professional environment, people need to remember and enter dozens of different passwords every day. Manually entering secure passwords every single time rapidly becomes time-demanding, to say the least. For most office workers, this is practically an impossible task.
That’s where password managers have become an indispensable tool in creating, storing, and managing secure and unique passwords for all the tools used in a regular workday.
Additionally, a lot of password management tools also have MFA, Multi-Factor Authentication, which is an added security layer on top of knowing the right password.
Authentication Methods
A password doesn’t serve as a sufficient method of authentication, especially when passwords are easy to guess, share, and reuse. Password managers can help reduce risks, but they can’t fully eliminate them. That is why additional user authentication methods are often required to ensure that access to sensitive data is protected.
To put it clearly, the authentication layer is designed to verify that the person entering the password is the expected user. MFAs are extremely popular, and typically integrate additional techniques, such as using a one-time code sent to an email or a mobile number.
But there are other authentication methods designed to limit interception risks. Token-based approaches, for instance, tend to use a mobile app that generates a randomized and unique code per login.
Alternatively, more and more authentication strategies are providing passwordless processes, like biometrics or emailing a login link, to create a seamless user experience. On mobile, users prefer biometric data, such as fingerprints, to gain access to a secure site or app without entering a password.
It’s worth noting that more and more services provide MAF may require the user to log in to a secure third-party app or service, such as opening the YouTube app from your phone as a verification when you’re trying to sign into Gmail.
What About Physical Access To Restrictive Areas?
The idea that businesses only need to secure their digital asset lacks realism. Physical assets also need to be kept secure, and this is where commercial door access control systems come into play.
The days where secure areas that were kept out of range through a mechanical solution, such as a padlock, or a code-based solution, such as a keypad, are now firmly in the past. These solutions are the physical security equivalent of using “password” as a password. They are easy to share and just as easy to break through.
It’s important to apply the same level of care and protectiveness to physical areas as to digital spaces. Why does this matter?
Essentially, for teams working extensively with confidential data and sensitive assets, these may be found in secure areas that are only accessible to trusted and vetted employees. For example, the server room may be out of reach for individuals without an authorised pass.
Another area that should be behind a physical barrier for controlled access is warehouse or storage zones with highly valuable assets, such as jewelry, valuable electronics, expensive medical and pharmaceutical drugs and devices, etc.
Behavioral Monitoring For Access
The way technology evolves, it is fair to say that the processes to control access, whether digital or physical, are also changing. Tools are becoming more effective at collecting and analyzing behavioral data, which means that in the near future, there are opportunities to identify unique individuals and control their digital and physical access to different areas.
For instance, using CCTV cameras and sensors could enable businesses in the future to provide physical access to areas to individuals who can be identified through a set of unique markers:
- Face
- Gait
- Height
- Silhouette and shape
- Eye color
- Estimated weight
For medical environments, thermal sensors could also restrict access to recognized and authorized individuals who present with an elevated temperature.
Would this be applicable to the digital world? Yes, there may be opportunities to identify users through their cursor movements and speed, their typing behaviors, scrolling habits, or even the way they handle hand-held devices. This approach would require a learning curve, and would also need to implement additional variability to account for disparity, related to level of fatigue, illness and pain, or even distraction.
Nevertheless, this has the potential to be more accurate than biometrics or passes/passwords in the long term if we develop a solution that is able to compare enough markers to provide a repeatable and correct answer.
The future of access control needs to move past passwords to embrace the full diversity of digital and physical access authorization. But the real question to ask is how fast will hacking evolve, and can we develop solutions that will keep business assets safe in the long run?
