It may seem like a wake-up call for protecting servers better, and improving network security, but the reality is that it's just a reminder that common sense and basic security practices could probably prevent this--and most other--attacks.

Where did Yahoo go wrong? Well, according to Jason Rhykerd, an IT security expert with , Yahoo made three serious mistakes.

1. Unencrypted Passwords

There are many security experts who are using this attack as an opportunity to remind users that they need to . Unfortunately, in this case. This was a failure of password handling, not a weakness of the passwords themselves.

According to Rob Rachwald, Director of Security Strategy at , "This breach highlights a disturbing trend in password security: as we saw with last month's breach of the LinkedIn social network, these passwords were stored in clear text and not hashed."