A new study from the Ponemon Institute, sponsored by authentication vendor NokNok Labs, sheds some light on the current state of password use — and as it turns out, misuse. The study surveyed 1,900 people in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany.
Curse You, Passwords
Nearly half of the study’s respondents were unable to execute an online transaction due to some form of password authentication failure. Most of those failures were a result of users forgetting their passwords.
Consumers also have a distrust of passwords in general. The report’s author, Larry Ponemon, told eSecurity Planet that 46 percent of respondents indicated that they don’t trust websites that only rely on passwords.
“We think that’s a sign that users are using websites without necessarily trusting them,” Ponemon said.
A common best practice that many websites attempt to enforce is the use of password complexity. As it turns out, that best practice isn’t always working for consumers. Ponemon said that 69 percent of consumers admitted that they had forgotten a password because it was too long or too complex.
Read the full story at eSecurity Planet:
Passwords Are Weak Link in Security
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.