Our Passwordless Future: a New Era of Security

Passwords have become increasingly cumbersome for users, and the burden is adding up to more than an inconvenience passwords also create serious security concerns As a result, IT leaders are sounding the alarm and advocating for a passwordless future to become a reality.

To better understand the drawbacks of passwords and how to move beyond them, Wakefield Research conducted a survey of 600 IT leaders across five markets on behalf of Ping Identity and Yubico garnering results that show how reliance on this outmoded tech can’t sustain in the current business environment. IT leaders estimate employees enter a password an average of 12 times a day. In fact, 25 estimate they input a password 20 times or more. Most troublingly, an overwhelming 94 of IT leaders are concerned about passwords, including 50 who worry they are too weak for security purposes.

In addition, IT departments are experiencing a 30 rise in password related incidents. And their employees are also suffering from lost productivity, wasting minutes or even hours a week entering and re-entering passwords. With new and advanced security options available, IT leaders recognize the best password security might be one with no password at all.

KEY GLOBAL FINDINGS

• 91% are very or somewhat worried about passwords being stolen at their organization.
• 33% of IT leaders say employees at their organization make minimal changes to passwords or worse reuse an old one; this might be why 50% rank passwords’ lack of security strength as a primary concern.
• 33% of IT department’s tickets are related to passwords, on average. For over a fifth (21%), half or more of their tickets are password
• 99% have not yet adopted passwordless authentication, but all (100%) IT leaders see the benefits of it. Over half see opportunities such as reduced security costs (52%) and enhanced security (52%), and nearly as many say it’ll lead to a reduced need for support (48%).
• 28 minutes a day: that’s the average amount of time employees could save if they switched to passwordless authentication that’s over 2 hours each week, or nearly 120 hours per year! Nearly a third of IT leaders (32%) estimate employees would save more than 30 minutes a day.
• 65% say their organization is completely or very likely to adopt passwordless authentication in the near future , 19% who have plans to do
• 91%agree that password security is a cultural issue that business leaders, not users,  need to take responsibility for.
• 83% of those with no plans for passwordless authentication admit their organization is unsure how to implement this.
• 96% recognize that passwordless authentication would create an easier user experience for employees, and nearly as many at organizations with customer logins (95%) say it would create an easier user experience for their clients.