Employees ‘would sell work password for £5’

Work password yours for £5 or less in new survey

While a third of employees said they would demand £50 or more for a login to their Facebook account, 48 per cent of those questioned in a survey for Ping Identity, said they would let their work password go for £5 or less.

Almost a third of employees (30 per cent) said that their passwords could be bought for £1 or less. Around 30 per cent said they would not sell their corporate login for any price.

John Fontana, of cloud security company Ping Identity, said: “The fact that personal identity is being rated higher than corporate identity has worrying implications for the safety of a business’ intellectual property and brand reputation.”

Most of those questions admitted to failing to follow good security practice, with 60 per cent saying that they write their passwords down. A third of those surveyed said they had given their corporate password to others.

Surveys regularly find that people choose insecure passwords that would be very easily guessed. The most commonly used password is “password” followed by “123456”, according to a list published last year.