Moving Beyond Passwords [Infographic]

Brian Wallace — May 11, 2020

Would it surprise you to learn that the average user has 191 passwords? We all have so many accounts we can’t even remember what they are anymore. So it’s no surprise that while 91% of people know you aren’t supposed to reuse passwords, 66% of people do it anyway. Without a better way, people just resort to the least difficult way of doing things. But what if there’s something better than passwords that can keep our businesses safe?

“Passwords are easy to guess, often, and you have to share it with the site you are logged into so the site has a copy, you have a copy, and all it takes is the breach of a site [to be compromised],” says Jim Clark, co-Founder of Netscape and Chairman and co-Founder of Beyond Identity.

Clark is a proponent of certificate-based and risk-based authentication. Certificate-based authentication eliminates the need for passwords by extending the chain of trust to individual users and eliminates guessable passwords. Risk-based authentication examines user identity, device security settings and posture, IP address, and geolocation to authenticate users, taking into account a person’s position within a company and their access to sensitive information and access history.

Without sign-in credentials, the surface of attack for hackers is significantly reduced, leading to fewer data breaches and less business interruption. Humans are the easiest point to attack, and hackers know how to get that information from you freely. Passwords and other login credentials make for an obvious and identifiable point of attack, and that’s why so many organizations are moving on to things like secure password managers and multi-factor authentication.

While multi-factor identification and password management apps can help prevent data breaches in the interim, the future appears to be without passwords. Learn more about the history and future of passwords from the infographic below.

Infographic Source: Beyond Identity

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