55% of people rely on their memory to manage passwords

2022-05-02 03:30

85% of Americans reuse passwords across multiple sites, a number comparable to the rest of the globe.

49% of U.S. respondents rely on their memory - a notoriously fickle tool - to manage passwords.

"Individuals understand they should be secure and that recognition is an important first step. But they can better protect themselves by embracing tools such as password managers that are readily available, and free. Password managers mitigate the need for an over-reliance on memory and password reuse across multiple sites."

"Despite the documented effectiveness and low cost of password managers, workplaces surprisingly often leave employees to figure password management out themselves," added Crandell.

Darren Siegel, Product Specialist at Specops Software, notes that while it's great to see more widespread adoption of longer passwords and 2FA, this report shows there is still a measurable set of users who continue to use short passwords as a single authentication factor, and password reuse if anything seems to be a growing problem.

"Attackers will always be looking for the weakest link in your security framework, so unless you are strictly enforcing long unique passwords and 2FA across all systems you still remain vulnerable to password-based attacks," he added.

News URL

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/05/02/password-management-habits/