Marcus White

Deployment

Security

Technical

Marcus is a Specops cybersecurity specialist based in the UK, with 8+ years experience in the tech and cyber sectors. He writes about authentication, password security, password management, and compliance.

Articles written by Marcus White

Oct

07

How to set up the key components of a password policy in Active Directory

Once you’ve planned out a new password policy, it’s time to put it into practice by setting the right configurations within your Active Directory. If you’re still at the planning stage, we’d recommend checking out our strategy tips for planning…
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Sep

24

Five strategy recommendations for planning a password policy

An Active Directory full of strong, non-compromised passwords should be an essential cybersecurity goal for every organization. A clearly articulated and enforceable password policy strategy is the best way to put this into practice. However, it's important to tailor your…
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Sep

12

[New research] Are VPN passwords secure? Two million malware-stolen passwords say no.

Today, the Specops research team is publishing new data on VPN passwords that have been stolen by malware. In total, our threat intelligence research team found 2,151,523 VPN passwords that have been compromised by malware over the past year. These…
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Aug

19

How we use Threat Intelligence to find new breached passwords

What makes a good breached password list? Numbers are a good start – the more breached passwords you can cross-reference against your Active Directory, the better. You want to maximize your chances of detecting end users who are using compromised…
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Aug

12

New hires, old problems: How to reduce password risk during onboarding

The first week of a new job always seems to involve plenty of time with the IT team – especially when onboarding remote employees. Setting up hardware, accesses, and passwords is an essential step. One of the first and most…
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Jul

30

How much are weak passwords costing your organization?

Bad passwords can be a direct and indirect financial drain on any organization. They’re often the weakest link in a security chain, allowing hackers easy access to sensitive systems and data. Cyber-attacks and breaches are the obvious risks, but there…
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Jul

16

[New research] Golf takes gold: Appears in over 40K breached Olympic sport passwords

Today, the Specops research team is publishing new data on end users choosing their sporting hobbies as passwords. Inspired by the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, we’ve looked at breached passwords that contain sports from the global sporting event as a…
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Jul

10

Rockyou2024 analysis: Mega password list or just noise?

Back in June 2021, a large data dump called ‘rockyou2021’ was posted on a popular hacking forum. It was named after the popular password list used in brute-force attacks called ‘Rockyou.txt’ – and it was a pretty big story at…
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Jun

25

Average organization saved $65K in 2023 with self-service password resets

Resetting passwords is a time and resource sink for IT helpdesks – Gartner found 40% of all help desk calls to the service desk are related to password expirations, changes, and resets. However, resets are also a part of life…
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Jun

10

NIS2, passwords, and MFA: Everything you need to know

MFA and password security are key considerations in several regulatory frameworks, and NIS2 is no different. The NIS2 Directive is an important piece of legislation for anyone working in cybersecurity across the European Union. The latest updates to the NIS2…
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