Rumors of Password Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

McAfee recently revealed that 72 different organizations around the world have been victims of cyber-spying. With attacks likely to increase, it is important to note that strengthening your access controls ensures that you have a higher level of security for all those who are attempting to access the network.

However, PKI is not the panacea that some hope it would be, and the death of passwords is greatly exaggerated. From a security perspective PKI is without a doubt the best, but when it comes to high cost of ownership, time consuming implementations and specialized support staff here as well PKI wins.

Passwords are free and very easy to control, but the weakness is not in passwords but rather how people choose them, manage them and types them. Almost every breach that involved passwords was not because of passwords but because of the password used by the individual. It is no wonder that accounts and companies are getting hacked through passwords especially when IT keeps making password security more burdensome on the user. Employees are being forced to write them down, come up with easy ones to remember and use the same ones everywhere. If security is cumbersome, employees will always circumvent it for their own convenience. That is a fact.

So that is why my company incorporated high security technology (smartcards, multi-factor authentication and encryption) with existing infrastructures (password security, existing ID badges), password management (secure, unique passwords for every account) and user convenience (two mouse clicks and nothing for the user to type, remember or know.) Without doing a product pitch, the take away is that passwords can be both secure and affordable means of security. With our advanced 8-Levels of Assurances Power LogOn delivers Authentication, Authorization, and Non-Repudiation.

I don’t believe that any single technology is superior to another, but rather it’s matching the best technology based on the constraints and problems that need to be addressed. Using a Ferrari to haul sheets of plywood doesn’t make much sense either.

So no, passwords are not dead, but the old ways of using them should be.