Why do we love weak passwords?

2022-09-21

Passwords are still a cornerstone of web security, especially for consumer-facing sites. But convincing consumers, and firms, to use stronger passwords remains a struggle Steven Furnell is a senior member of the IEEE, and professor of cybersecurity at the University of Nottingham. For the last 15 years, he has been tracking the password policies of leading web and ecommerce sites. Do they, for example, allow weak or easy to guess passwords? And how easy do they make it for users to pick stronger ...

Passwords are still a cornerstone of web security, especially for consumer-facing sites.

But convincing consumers, and firms, to use stronger passwords remains a struggle

Steven Furnell is a senior member of the IEEE, and professor of cybersecurity at the University of Nottingham.

For the last 15 years, he has been tracking the password policies of leading web and ecommerce sites. Do they, for example, allow weak or easy to guess passwords?

And how easy do they make it for users to pick stronger passwords, or to use alternatives such as multi-factor authentication?

The answers have implications, not just for security online, but for the way we use passwords in business too.

Interview by Stephen Pritchard

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