Here at LastPass, we’re talking with IT managers and CISO’s every day. More often than not, we learn that they have a security problem to solve and a password manager is likely how they’ll do so. However, so many of them are first concerned with providing a solution for their IT team, not all employees.
New research conducted by Ovum discovers this disconnect is driving the password security gap at many organizations. Our latest research report, titled “Closing the password security gap: Employee education isn’t the only answer” found that nearly three-quarters of employees want a tool to help them manage their passwords. That’s not surprising knowing that 61 percent of IT executives rely exclusively on employee education to enforce strong passwords. Scary.
Factor in the lack of IT control over apps in use by employees and the frequency of employee password problems, and you have an ever-widening gap between IT and employees. But it’s a gap that can be filled!
We uncovered many interesting – some surprising – trends among IT executives and employees. Some of those findings include:
- Too much control in employee’s hands: 61 percent of IT executives rely exclusively on employee education to enforce strong passwords. Given that 81% of breaches are caused by weak, reused, or compromised passwords, this is not an effective approach for organization.
- Many IT processes are outdated: Four in ten companies still rely on entirely manual processes to manage user passwords for cloud applications.
- Employees are asking for a solution: Given the challenges (over three-quarters of people reported regular password problems) and the manual processes for maintaining passwords, it’s no surprise that 69% of employees would use a password manager if they were offered one.
