Late last week, the UK Parliament was under a “sustained” cyber attack.  Of course, the hackers were exploiting a known weakness common to many organizations — single-factor authentication which relies solely on passwords.

The parliamentary authorities said hackers had mounted a “determined attack” on all user accounts “in an attempt to identify weak passwords”.

A parliamentary spokeswoman said they were investigating the attack and liaising with the National Cyber Security Centre.

She said: “We have discovered unauthorised attempts to access accounts of parliamentary networks users…

“Parliament has robust measures in place to protect all of our accounts and systems, and we are taking the necessary steps to protect and secure our network.

“As a precaution we have temporarily restricted remote access to the network.”

International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said: “We have seen reports in the last few days of even Cabinet ministers’ passwords being for sale online.

“And it’s a warning to everybody, whether they are in Parliament or elsewhere, that they need to do everything possible to maintain their own cyber security.” (source)

Whether your organization is an enterprise, SMB, not-for-profit, or government agency, you and your accounts are cyber targets.  With a robust two-factor authentication solution like GreenRADIUS, you can add a strong security layer to your organization that is easy for both users and administrators.  Contact us to learn more.