PayPal CISO Michael Barrett delivered a keynote address at the Interop conference last week, with the message that passwords need to die. His rationale is simple; the modern password system is broken and is being breached with alarming regularity.
“When left to their own devices, users will pick poor passwords and then use them all over the place,” Barrett said. “It reduces their security to the least secure place on the Internet.”
Barrett is a realist and thus knows that no one can ever be completely secure. In his view, security is about managing degrees of risk – and passwords don’t do enough to reduce risk and can even increase risk by creating new opportunities for hackers.
Read the full story at eSecurity Planet:
Paypal Security Chief Wants to Obliterate Passwords
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.