New Survey Shows People Still Have Bad Password Habits

For the last several years, industry experts have been sounding the alarm about password security.  We've known for quite some time that one of the biggest weak spots in corporate security is the fact that employee passwords are notoriously weak. Millions have been spent on security education.  Seminars have been held on the dangers of using weak passwords and using the same password across multiple websites.

Endless rounds of training courses have been held trying to ram the point home.

The result? Not much has changed. According to a recent survey conducted by Google, two out of three users surveyed are still holding firm, using the same bad password habits they were before all the money and time was spent trying to convince them of the errors of their ways.

It gets worse though, if you can believe it.  A staggering 69 percent of survey respondents gave themselves an A or B grade for their ability to protect their online accounts, with 59 percent indicating a belief that they were better than the average person when it comes to keeping their accounts safe.

Other highlights of the survey include gems like:

• Less than a quarter of respondents said they use a password manager
• Only two thirds of respondents say they regularly update their OS and applications, even though 80 percent said they understood that such updates were crucial in terms of keeping their systems safe
• Only 32 percent of respondents could successfully identify all three of the following terms: phishing, two-factor authentication and password manager.

It's a surreal landscape of results that reveals an enormous amount of wishful thinking, and of course, it's an absolute bonanza for hackers around the world.  With this data in mind, it's a safe bet that 2019 will be another record-breaking year where successful data breaches are concerned.  Brace for it.