Hi,

In the month of December we have had 2 customers who have had their security breached with someone having access to their server. In both cases, the hacker got into their network through user names and passwords.

Many people don't change their passwords on a regular basis, some just keep it simple and perhaps use their name as a password. There are some very clever people out there and if someone has a user name of tammy and a password of tammy, it will not take them long to figure this out. Therefore we would urge you all to change your passwords as soon as possible and chose something which is far harder to guess.

We would recommend that you have a password that contains at least 7 characters, has 1 capital letter and at least 1 number included within it; as this combination is far more trickier to de-code. Whilst this does not guarantee that you won't be 'attacked' by an outsider, it will lessen the chances and certainly make it far more difficult for them to breach your network. Do not use PASSWORD!

Some examples:

L3tme1n (let me in)

chr1stmaS (christmas)

DruMm3rb0y (drummer boy)

Please call our technical team if you have any questions or want further advice on 0870 0429 076

Thanks

The AKM Team