New research shows that 39% of Irish adults haven't changed their main password in over a year, and that 43% have no method for storing their passwords.
Password management has become a minefield of misinformation and bad practice in recent years, with every website and corporate login system implementing its own complicated requirements for passwords. Today's passwords must meet minimum length requirements, include upper and lower case characters, and use special characters or numbers, all of which serves to make them harder for users to remember.
While password complexity is important, the best security comes from using a unique password every time so that if one website is breached your login details to others are safe. Many compromised accounts on websites and online services turn out to be the result of credential stuffing attacks in which an attacker simply tries known usernames and passwords from previous breaches.
The solution to many of these problems is to use a good password manager, a piece of software that stores your passwords for every site in an encrypted database and helps you maintain a unique password for each. Accessing the database requires that the user just remember one master password, which itself must meet certain minimum complexity standards. It's suggested that users change this password regularly to limit the window of access if a hacker does manage to get your master password.
New research commissioned by OneLogin and carried out by YouGov has shown that around 39% of the 1,000 Irish adults surveyed haven't updated their main password in the last 12 months. Around half of those hadn't changed their passwords in over two years, and another 5% couldn't remember ever changing their password.
Respondents were surveyed on a variety of questions relating to their security and password habits, revealing that 43% of Irish adults have no method of storing their passwords and would rely on memory. About 24% of adults save their passwords on their phone or computer, while a further 27% write them down on paper.
Source: TechCentral.ie
