78% of people forgot a password in the past 90 days

Passwords are the dominant way online services manage access to our personal and work-related lives. But often times, they’re more of a headache than a security tool.

HYPR released the findings of a two and a half year Password Usage Study, which compiled data from over 500 full-time workers across the United States and Canada to better understand how individuals use, treat and manage their passwords.

According to the findings, 72% of individuals reuse passwords in their personal life while 49% of employees simply change or add a digit or character to their password when updating their company password every 90 days.

Forgot a password? Usage practices revealed

A majority of users recently require a password reset due to forgetting their password.

• 78% of respondents required a password reset in their personal life within the last 90 days
• 57% of respondents required a password reset in their work life within the last 90 days

A sizeable amount of users manage an overwhelming number of passwords.

• 37% of respondents have over 20 passwords in their personal life
• 19% of respondents have over 10 passwords in their work life

A majority of users depend on physical and digital lists to manage their passwords.

• 65% of respondents use an app or keep a digital or physical list of passwords in their personal life
• 58% of respondents use an app or keep a digital or physical list of passwords in their work life

“As a society, we’re so accustomed to using passwords and shared secrets that we tend to overlook just how important user experience is,” said George Avetisov, CEO of HYPR.

“As the world evolves beyond passwords, we believe that true passwordless security delivered through the enterprise will rapidly eliminate the need for users to reuse, manage, reset or even think about passwords.”

Conclusions

• People do not rely on technology that’s created to help them manage their passwords. This is due to a lack of knowledge of their existence, uncertainty of how to use them, and not trusting a third party to keep their passwords secure and not share them.
• The majority of individuals rely on their own memory that time and time again proves to fail, with constant password resets happening every time a user cannot recall a password to a service they are trying to access at any given moment.
• People still rely on traditional means of keeping important information out of memory but yet still accessible. This previously meant simple pieces of paper or notes, but have since transitioned with the digital revolution to Word docs, emails, spreadsheets, and so on.