Password Security? 1000 Passwords and Counting....

Very few things in life are more frustrating then receiving an email stating that I must change my password within an allotted time period. Daily, I have different passwords for work, school, Facebook, fantasy football, and my personal computer. This list can go on forever. Not to mention that every bank you apply to has separate parameters on what the application password can be, but that’s a different story. This is frustrating because I have dozens of user names and passwords that I periodically need to change. I have been at my current internship for 6 month and am currently on my third password, which is a little ridiculous in my opinion.

In middle school I received my first notification that I needed to change my password for my fantasy baseball account. I attempted to just ignore the problem, thinking it would just go away. Comparable to when you see something on the subway that is unmentionable. Just turn your head and forget about it. However, this plan was not as successful as ignoring the ridiculous person on the subway, my account was locked!! After it locks you have to fill out ridiculous security questions and wait for an email to come for further instructions. The whole process is completely frustrating because in most cases something you wanted to take 2 minutes is now going to take 15.

According to the University of Maryland and other institutions a good password should contain; at lest 6 letters, lower and upper case letters, some type of punctuation mark in the middle, and to “use your imagination”. I am not disagreeing with the University of Maryland but who can remember passwords with all of those rules, especially when I need to remember various passwords on a daily basis.

I understand that password security is very important because if that information were to get in the wrong hands it would be devastating for the business or university. I just think their needs to be a better why to safeguard passwords, rather then demanding students or employees change them ever 2 month. Maybe we should use Hollywood spy movies like the Jason Bourne series for guidance and switch as password security to using finger prints for identification. Now that would make it harder for hackers to guess passwords.