Are you somebody who reuses passwords over and over until you finally are forced to change them? You aren’t alone. In fact, as much as 65% of people know that reusing passwords isn’t the best way to practice password hygiene but do so anyway?
While it may seem fine to simply add a few extra numbers or special characters at the end of your favorite password, it makes it easy for cyber criminals to hack into your accounts.
Statistics of Weak Passwords and Behaviors
If most of us know that reusing passwords is a no-no when it comes to security practices, then why do we still do it anyway? Check out our list of password statistics that highlight bad password behaviors to see how this could be detrimental to not only your personal security, but your business’ as well.
- According to a study by LastPass, 36% of people employ bad password habits because they believe their accounts aren’t “valuable enough” for them to be hacked.
- GoodFirms notes that 62.9% of online users only change their passwords when they’re prompted to.
- 92% of people know that using a variation of the same password is a security risk, but 65% of them always or mostly use the same password or a variation of it, according to LastPass.
- In a survey by Keeper Security, 37% of respondents used their employer’s name in work-related passwords.
- 18% of Dashlane survey respondents have reset their work passwords on an average of five or more times in 2020.
- 30% of all IT experts, employees, and heads of organizations respondents said they have experienced security breaches due to weak passwords. (GoodFirms)
- 78% of respondents surveyed by HYPR in 2019 said forgetting a password caused 78% of respondents to reset one within the last 90 days at the time of the survey.
Tips for Better Password Hygiene
Understanding what makes your passwords insecure and easily hackable is the first step in creating better password hygiene. These statistics about best practices and the future of password security will help keep you and your data safe in the long run.
- 32% of respondents to a Duo Labs survey said they used a password manager in 2021.
- 65% of respondents said that biometrics will increase the security of their organizations authentication process. 55% believe the same of passwordless authentication, according to Yubico and Pokémon Institute.
- After examining five million passwords that were breached in the Gmail hack of 2014, most passwords were eight characters in length, according to WPEngine.
- In 2021, the word “dolphin” was the most popular password that related to animals, according to NordPass.
- 21% of passwords include the user’s birth year, and 18% of passwords include the name of the user’s pet, according to Security.org.
- Out of the 10 million passwords WPEngine examined ended in a number between 0 and 99.
Now that you know the statistics for weak passwords and also the statistics and tips for better password hygiene, you can put them into action. Remember to keep yourself and your business’ data secure by implementing best practices. You can easily do this by streamlining your company’s security compliance by implementing security measures at every step.
Please include attribution to secureframe.com with this graphic.
