Password-based authentication is no longer capable of meeting the demands of modern information security, latest research findings claim.
According to survey data from mobile authentication platform LaunchKey, 84 percent of respondents would support eliminating passwords all together.
Additionally, more than three-fourths of those surveyed (76 percent) feel their data would be more secure with an alternative form of verification, with 59 percent preferring fingerprint scans over passwords.
Nearly half of the survey respondents (46 percent) said they currently have more than 10 passwords to manage, and 68 percent acknowledged that they reuse passwords for multiple accounts.
Additionally, 77 percent said they often forget passwords or have to write them down. Among respondents’ top password “pet peeves” are those systems that require users to change their password frequently, and systems that require users to create passwords that do not fit the model of one they regularly use.
“Today, the pace of security breaches directly related to stolen passwords and bypassed authentication is increasing along with the severity of their consequences,” says Geoff Sanders, CEO, LaunchKey.
“Passwords are inherently insecure as a method of authentication, and their efficacy relies on end users, developers, system administrators, and the applications themselves, all of which are vulnerable to a wide variety of attack vectors currently being exploited by cyberattacks around the world.”
Adding to this point, Sanders noted that 27 percent of survey respondents acknowledged sharing their passwords with someone else.
While strong authentication is the correct approach to be taken, the traditional method of two-factor authentication (2FA) is insufficient.
According to the survey, 64 percent of those surveyed do not know what 2FA is while only 20 percent say 2FA is easy to use.
Furthermore, many 2FA solutions on the market today represent a noticeable cost and logistical burden. A single hardware token can cost as much as $100 or more, making a 2FA solution that only satisfies a limited subset of use cases, impractical.
Th survey also measured users’ trust of public institutions to protect personal information.
With the high number of recent data breaches in retail stores, such as Target and Home Depot, it is no surprise that 52 percent of survey respondents expressed little to no confidence in retail stores being able to properly secure one’s personal information, and 43 percent had little to no confidence in online retailers.
Conversely, 48 percent of respondents expressed high confidence in banks being able to protect personal information.
“The future of authentication is free from traditional passwords,” Sanders adds.
“We must remove the vulnerability and liability that passwords have created while implementing more secure authentication methods that account for an evolving and diversified landscape of use cases, end users and threats.”
