What a gem heist tells us about enterprise authentication risk

On October 18, 2025, thieves brazenly stole the French Crown Jewels from the Louvre Museum — and in the aftermath, one detail stood out as shockingly illustrative of a broader cyber-risk: the password for the museum’s video surveillance system was simply “Louvre.”

Yes, the world’s most famous museum guarding irreplaceable national treasures and a critical security system protected by a stupid password so literal it beggars belief. Beyond the optics, this story delivers a clear message to every enterprise CIO, CISO, and infrastructure leader: even legacy systems in prestige institutions can harbour risky, trivial credentials, and that puts every organization at risk.

Passwords: Not just a user-problem

It would be easy to dismiss this as a museum outlier — “they must have been behind the times.” Yet the data say otherwise.

• Roughly 78% of individuals reuse the same password across multiple accounts — and 52 % use it on three or more.

• Studies show 80% of security breaches involve phishing or compromised login credentials.

The root problem: human behavior. Re-using, sharing, or choosing predictable passwords isn’t a tech problem, it’s a people + process problem — which means any policy relying on humans to “be perfect” is flawed. If the Louvre can run a video-surveillance server protected by “Louvre,” your enterprise is likely just one audit away from a similar weak link.

Legacy systems amplify the threat

What makes the Louvre example even worse is how deep the rot goes: audits going back to 2014 flagged “trivial” passwords and outdated infrastructure (including unsupported OS/hardware). For enterprise environments, legacy systems and forgotten services often become the breeding ground for these weak credentials. They’re rarely covered by the latest MFA roll-outs or identity governance programs.

It's time to ask a new question

It’s no longer sufficient to ask “Are our passwords strong enough?” Instead ask: “Why are we still relying on passwords at all?” Because when the weakest link is a word a human chose – and can reuse, share or type wrong – you’re offering attackers a predictable entry point.

At Password Free, our message is clear: removing passwords entirely, even for legacy systems, isn’t a “nice-to-have,” it’s a necessity. We help organizations replace password-based access across desktops, cloud apps, VPNs and on-prem systems. Because when the world’s most famous museum can’t enforce strong password hygiene, what hope do ordinary companies have?

For more information, read about the museum’s post-heist security report in PC Gamer and the original reporting in Libération (paywall).

Don’t risk your company’s crown jewels. Password Free can help you secure all the systems across your entire enterprise even if you’ve got older systems that can’t easily adopt modern authentication. Let’s talk!