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October 17, 2014

Poor password habits putting firms at risk

Poor password habits putting firms at riskEmployees are struggling to remember the growing number of online passwords they need at work, and that is impacting on productivity as well as raising security concerns.

The average employee wastes £261 a year in company time on trying to manage multiple passwords, according to a survey of 1,000 UK workers from Centrify Corporation.

The research shows that more than a quarter of workers enter a password more than ten times a day. It also found that:

  • 38% of workers have accounts they cannot get into any more because they cannot remember the password;
  • 28% get locked out at least once a month due to multiple incorrect password entries;
  • one in five change their passwords at least once a month;
  • 14% believe they will have 100+ passwords to deal with in the next five years.

Barry Scott, EMEA chief technology officer for Centrify, said: “In our new digital lifestyles, we are constantly having to juggle multiple passwords for everything from email and mobile apps to online shopping and social media. This is becoming a real challenge for employers who need to manage security and privacy concerns and for employees who are costing their companies time and money.”

The research found that 47% of employees use their personal mobile phone for work. However, it discovered that 34% do not use passwords on these devices even though they keep office email, confidential documents, customer contact information and budget information on them.

Also this week, a new survey from the government’s Cyber Streetwise campaign has revealed that 75% of us do not follow best practice to create complex passwords.

More than a third (35%) of those questioned admitted that they do not create strong passwords because they struggle to recall them. Nearly half (47%) have unsafe password habits such as using pet names or significant dates.

Jamie Saunders, director of the National Crime Agency (NCA) National Cyber Crime Unit, said cyber criminals “will target weakness and therefore having weak passwords will leave you vulnerable”. The best way to deter hackers, said Saunders, is to use a mixture of numbers, letters and symbols and upper and lower case letters in a password.

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