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The Account Lockout Policy in Active Directory Group Policy sets the number of failed sign-in attempts before a user account is locked out. Once the account is locked out, it cannot be used (even with the correct password) until... Read More

If your colleagues are Star Wars fans, they might be at risk for breached password use. On May the 4th, the unofficial Star Wars fandom holiday, Specops Software investigated which Star Wars themed passwords were most popular in breached... Read More

This article takes a look at the Password Entropy calculation in Specops Password Auditor. What is entropy? Entropy is a concept borrowed from information theory. In the password context, entropy can be summarized as: how many guesses would it... Read More

A couple of weeks ago, we revealed the top Major League Baseball team names that are a homerun for hackers in conjunction with Opening Day. With the Oscars just around the corner, we’re refreshing our list to share the... Read More

There are an alarming number of cyberattacks targeting the healthcare industry. In October 2020, the FBI released a security warning to hospitals and government agencies of an imminent danger of ransomware attacks. Attackers were said to be targeting healthcare... Read More

Purple Fox is malware that was first discovered in 2018 but has seen a recent rise in proliferation as hackers take advantage of a new attack method: weak passwords used over the SMB protocol. SMB (Server Message Block) is... Read More

The German Federal Office for Information Security (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik, abbreviated as BSI) is an agency responsible for information security for the German federal government. The BSI is also the central certification body for IT systems.... Read More

Data privacy has become a priority for global businesses due to sweeping regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). At the same time, other regulatory bodies continue to enforce local data privacy laws. In France, for example,... Read More

The Cincinnati Reds, America’s oldest baseball team, may have one of Major League Baseball’s (MLB) worst pre-season odds to win the World Series, but the team sits alone in first place on Specops’ breached password list. This is according... Read More

Organizations can increase the security of Active Directory passwords by filtering specific passwords from being used in their environment. Password filters help bolster the security protections of Active Directory Password Policy settings by ensuring that end-users cannot use passwords... Read More