Analysis of the password habits of some 8,000 individuals suggests that three-quarters haven’t yet adopted best practice, according to cybersecurity vendor Keeper Security.
Darren Guccione, CEO and co-founder of Keeper Security, said that one in four respondents agreed that they were either burying their heads in the sand, careless as bulls in china shops or metaphorically “paralysed with fear” when it came to password management.
“The industry clearly still has much work to do to get more people comfortable with cybersecurity and better protected as a result,” Guccione said.
Respondents hailed from the UK, USA, France and Germany. Sixty-four percent of the sample agreed they used weak or reused passwords for online accounts, with seventy-five percent admitting they don’t adhere to “widely accepted” password best practice.
More than a third accepted they felt overwhelmed when it came to acting on cybersecurity.
According to Keeper Security, this suggests they might be falling short in reality as well, putting themselves and by extension the organisations where they work at more risk of cyberattack.
But Craig Lurey, CTO and co-founder of Keeper Security, pointed out that using a password manager is an “easy” way of shoring up weak practice.
“Along with creating and storing strong and unique passwords for all digital accounts, a password manager can offer protection against phishing attacks and malicious links,” Lurey said. “A password manager can also be paired with dark web monitoring so users can take action immediately if credentials are compromised.”
In June, GigaOm analysts named Keeper Security the overall leader its Radar report for Password Management for the second year in a row.
Keeper just unveiled a Safari browser extension that’s separate from its desktop app, following up announcements of passkey support to streamline authentication and multi-cloud password rotation that allows organisations to automatically update privileged credentials.
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