Using Stronger Passwords Among Top 2024 Digital Resolutions

Almost a quarter of people mentioned cybersecurity among their New Year’s digital resolutions for 2024, according to Kaspersky.

In the latest edition of its New Year resolutions annual survey, the cybersecurity provider found that 13% of respondents vowed to use stronger passwords in 2024.

The resolution was critical for UK respondents, who were 24% to plan on implementing better password hygiene. They were 19% in France and Germany.

One-tenth (10%) also promised themselves to be more mindful of the links they click on.

These findings come after another busy year for phishing and a record-breaking one for data breaches in some countries.

Read more: US Smashes Annual Data Breach Record With Three Months Left

Making 2024 the Safest Digital Year Yet

Additionally, doing more backups was cited as one measure respondents were willing to take in 2024 as part of developing better email management.

This was especially true in Germany, where 19% of respondents pledged to back up more regularly.

David Emm, the principal security researcher for Kaspersky, commented: “It’s heartening to see people are realizing the importance of making improvements to digital life by establishing a digital detox or boundaries, decluttering files and enhancing security and privacy practices. It would be wonderful for 2024 to be the safest digital year yet and for people to continue to evaluate and improve cyber safety practices.”

Kaspersky’s Recommended Security Measures for 2024

Kaspersky provided a list of general recommendations for people willing to improve their personal cyber hygiene. These include:

• Helping secure all devices used for online transactions – banking, shopping, socializing – by applying patches as soon as they become available
• Using a unique, complex password for all your online accounts
• Reviewing privacy and security settings carefully and limiting what can be seen and shared
• Disabling apps and features unless in use
• Disabling tracking services and location services, and set your browser to clear cookies regularly
• Checking email addresses against services such as “Have I Been Pwned” to see if any of your digital accounts have been compromised

The results of this study come from 5500 adults aged 18-64 across the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands who responded to an online survey conducted by Arlington Research, an independent market research agency, between November and December 2023. The agency set nationally representative quotas for gender, age and region.