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Do as I say, not as I do?
Many IT and cybersecurity professionals aren’t taking their own advice when it comes to practicing good cybersecurity hygiene.
According to a recent Arctic Wolf report, which queried roughly 1,500 security decision-makers and end-users in July, 68% of IT and cybersecurity leaders admitted to reusing passwords at least occasionally. This compares to 64% of end users.
And the revelations don’t stop there, as IT professionals also confessed to living on the edge when it comes to storing their passwords. About 26% of respondents claimed that they kept track of their passwords by writing them down or using a computer spreadsheet. Meanwhile, 29% said that they relied on their memory to track their credentials. The report also found that 36% of IT leaders commit the grievous sin of disabling security measures on their system.
Nothing new under the sun. The report’s findings come as the need for good credential hygiene has only grown in importance. Last year, IT Brew reported that the 10 most common passwords in 2023 could be cracked in seconds.
Dashlane CTO Frédéric Rivain previously told IT Brew that organizations are slowly going in the “right direction” when it comes to improving their password health, but noted that these strides have been slow.
Jasson Casey, co-founder and CEO of Beyond Identity, told IT Brew that the Arctic Wolf report findings around IT leaders’ password habits are unsurprising.
“Humans are going to human,” Casey said, adding that passwords are “one of the most terrible user design ideas ever.”
Casey told IT Brew that the “simple solution” to the weak credential hygiene problem is to ditch passwords entirely and switch to passkeys.
“Passwords have to die and passwords need to die immediately,” Casey said.