Password Fatigue - The Untold Story
Does this sound familiar? Yes, all of us are going through a syndrome called "Password fatigue" and resort to setting such trivial passwords. Our digital footprint is continuously increasing, the average person visits hundreds of websites every day and many of these websites ask for passwords. People are frustrated and under stress due to the endless list of passwords they need to remember to access these websites. This stress is causing "Password fatigue".
The Infamous Password Rules
"Password should be minimum 8 characters long with a capital letter, a number and a symbol", "Your password is more than 90 days old, please change it first to access your account", "Your password cannot contain your name, DOB and age. First there is a struggle to come up with a unique password following the policies, then reset it every few months and keep updating your memory. Phew… more frustration.
Frustration arises from thinking you know what (your password is), and it's not that.
This frustration causes fatigue and hackers take advantage of the situation.
Consequences
According to a report, the average business user maintains around 190 passwords and this count is increasing. It is impossible to first come up with so many passwords and then remember. People start taking security lightly and resort to bad password habits:
- Password reuse: People tend to reuse the same passwords for multiple sites. Hackers can gain access to multiple accounts if passwords are compromised. According to google, 65% of the people reuse the same passwords across multiple sites.
- Use common or trivial passwords: People set common passwords such as "123456", "qwetry". These are very easy targets for hackers
- Password sharing: People ignore the consequences and start sharing passwords with spouse, friends and colleagues.
- Password storing: People write it on their notebooks, paper slips and computer files which are not always under their watch. Passwords are easily compromised this way.
- Storing in browser or password managers: People grant permissions to browsers to store passwords in memory or in-built password managers.
The Cure
This is a universal problem and people around the world are trying to find the solution to reduce password fatigue. Mechanisms such as magic links, One-time passwords (OTP), biometrics and webAuthn by FIDO alliance are finally here to make passwords obsolete. This is a clear signal that passwords will be history sooner.
End of passwords will remove password fatigue and in-turn provide a secured ecosystem with better user experience.
SecQure is a passwordless SaaS Platform. We provide secure, plug-n-play SDKs and APIs supporting all programming languages, that authenticate the users without the pain of passwords with highest standard of security. SecQure can be integrated with any platform and technology within minutes.
