Recently, RoboForm sponsored a password security survey via uSamp, which polled 1,000 random people in the US and UK about their personal and professional password security practices. In last week’s post, we discussed results pertaining to personal password security and gave readers some ideas for making themselves more secure online. In this post, we’re going to be focusing on professional password security and its effects on overall corporate security and workplace productivity.
Corporate Security & Productivity Issues
1. Have you ever forgotten a password, or had a password compromised, in your professional life?
Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed indicated that they have either forgotten a password or had one compromised in their professional lives. In the case of the latter, a hacker can often gain access to an entire company’s information through just one compromised login.
Recommendation:Be sure to use unique, secure passwords for all of your logins at work and to change them every 60-90 days.
2. How many times have you forgotten any of your passwords for work in the past month?
Based upon the survey results, 71% of respondents have forgotten at least one work password in the past month. Besides the obvious security implications, forgetting passwords also decreases productivity at work, as we will see in the next survey question.
Recommendation: Many workplaces require employees to use strong passwords and to change them frequently. If your company does not employ a password management solution, a good way to create and remember a strong password is to abbreviate a quote or song lyric while substituting special characters for letters (such as ! for I, @ for a, etc)
3. On average, for how long are you unable to access files as a result of forgetting your password at work?
According to the responses we received, 63% of people were unable to access files for 6 minutes or greater when they forgot a password at work. In addition, 10% of respondents were unable to access files for 30 minutes or more. Just imagine the amount of time wasted when 10% of an office loses more than 30 minutes of file access each time they forget a password which, according to the responses of the previous question, happens to 71% of people at least once per month!
Recommendation: If you are an employer or manager, make sure that your employees know that forgotten passwords can not only cause issues with security, but with productivity as well.
4. How many technology devices do you operate on a daily basis? Ex: laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc.
These results didn’t really surprise us, but are very telling of just how large of a role technology plays in our daily lives. Based on the responses, 65% of people use 3 or more computers/devices on a daily basis. The more devices that a person uses, the more susceptible they can become to lost or stolen passwords.
Recommendation: Be sure that all your devices are secure- use PIN or fingerprint security on your devices and always be sure to log out of computers when you are not using them.
