How we made cybersecurity professionals give away their data – at a cybersecurity expo

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre recently released a list of the 100,000 most common passwords. To say I cringed would be an understatement. 23.2 million accounts are still using ‘123456’ as a password, with people’s names, favourite football teams and favourite bands also making up the most common. Perhaps there’s still a perception amongst us that we’re anonymous – there’s no way a hacker (who is otherwise a stranger) could find that information out. Sadly, that’s just not true. And we know this because we put that theory to the test at a cybersecurity event hosted by Probrand, where we saw just how willing people were to give sensitive data away. The ‘data for donuts’ test. To set the scene, the event was predominantly made up of UK security professionals. To start with, we asked people questions which were conversational on the surface, but which ended with people inadvertently sharing sensitive information.