According to data coming from Lieberman Software, passwords are still a problem in the enterprise, including apathy from senior management, and password related chaos from IT staff.
Lieberman’s data reveals a fundamental lack of IT security awareness in enterprises, particularly in the arena of password control and privileged logins. For example, 42-percent of the 300 IT professionals surveyed said that their organization share passwords and 51-percent said they needed to remember ten or more passwords for work alone.
Moreover, 50-percent of the passwords in use remain unchanged, despite password rotation being a basic security practice. This is in addition to the respondents admitting that they were aware of some users abusing shared privileges, in order to access information they shouldn’t.
“Password anarchy among the IT staff at major organizations is mirrored by password apathy at the top of the management hierarchy, where senior management seem almost criminally lax in the enforcement of IT security policies – to the detriment of their organizations,” commented Philip Lieberman, President and CEO of Lieberman Software.
“Management will have to pay far more attention to their basic security practices or be forced to apologize to their shareholders and customers for major data losses and subsequent damage to brand loyalty. The simple, unpalatable truth is that senior management generally is not policing their IT security departments enough to avoid further massive data breaches.”
The full report is available here.
Related: Survey Reveals How Stupid People are With Their Passwords
