World Password Day is celebrated the first Thursday in May to encourage people to reflect on just how vulnerable a poor password can leave you. This year in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it feels more important than ever to review our password habits. As we’ve all moved more and more of our lives online and we see an increase of cyber attacks, it’s essential we protect our critical information from threats.
Our new Psychology of Passwords report surveyed 3,250 people from around the global about their online security habits – and their answers clearly demonstrate there is room for improvement. Let’s take a look at the most alarming stats and what you changes you can make to protect yourself until the next World Password Day.
Two thirds of people mostly or always reuse passwords
Creating unique, strong passwords for each and every online account is essential. In case one of your accounts is hacked, or included in a 3rd party breach, all your other accounts won’t be at risk too. Surprisingly 66% of people surveyed are not following this essential password practice. They’re reusing the same password everywhere, even though 91% of them say they know it’s not safe.
How are you going to remember all these unique passwords you might ask?
According to our survey 54% are still trying to memorize their passwords. Memorizing a unique, long passwords for all your dozens of online accounts is impossible – so don’t try it. A password manager like LastPass will save and automatically fill in these passwords for you.
Beyond using passwords to lock down your online accounts, you should also enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on any account that offers it. MFA requires a second piece of information to login – like a one-time code or your fingerprint, adding an additional layer of security to your essential accounts.
To get started with MFA, start by adding it to your email and financial accounts, which are your most important accounts. From there, you can add MFA to other accounts (or all of them!) You’d be surprised to hear that 54% of your peers are already doing it!This shouldn’t detract from the need for robust and unique passwords, which is where account security starts.
Taking just a few simple steps to improve how you manage passwords can lead to increased safety for your online accounts. Make World Password Day 2020 the tipping point for a change in your password behavior.
Want to see the other shocking online behaviors we found in our survey? View the full infographic and ebook here.
