Mumbai Police share cybersecurity advisory with witty meme; netizens impressed

Mumbai Police on Monday took to its official Twitter handle to share an advisory on the data and internet security via a witty post that featured ‘lookalikes’. The cops warned against setting the same passwords across different platforms and instead urged to use more complex and secure passwords to deter the risks of cybercrimes and account compromise. The image uploaded by the Mumbai police featured the Bollywood actor Varun Dhawan, acclaimed cricketer Virat Kohli, and Alvaro Morte aka The Professor from the popular Netflix series The Money Heist.

Comically, while the three replica figures don similar hairstyles and were easily ‘recognizable’. “Examples of how not to keep passwords for different online accounts,” the cops wrote in a subsequent tweet, rolling out an important cyber advisory. Commenters were quick to agree that most people opted to keep one password across different accounts since it easily conjured up in the memory, the others appreciated the police’s sense of humour while making a valid point.

“One password always remembered,” a comment wrote. While the simple and redundant passwords were easy for the authentication process, it also gave leeway to the malicious websites to hack into the accounts and compromise the data. Mumbai police, in a hilarious way, aimed to caution the users. With more and more businesses moving onto the virtual space during the COVID-19 pandemic, cybersecurity threats are looming large. And there’s a risk that cyber attackers could steal credentials by cracking vague and redundant passwords. 

Activating Multi-factor authentication (MFA)

The cops, via the similar-looking actors and cricketer, and them flaunting the same hairstyle aimed to warn the users against the weak passwords. At the same time, the police encouraged the online users to adhere to the password security best practices and generally avoid weak and similar passwords vulnerable to cracking. Cyberpress Data Defense, a dedicated global security advisor suggests that when online users tend to use “similar passwords” across different networks and systems, it ends up making their passwords vulnerable to hacking. It also advises activating Multi-factor authentication (MFA) across different accounts such as the PINs, security questions, hardware or software tokens, SMS, phone calls, for more layers of security.