World Password Day: Quest Industry expert offers his view
Passwords are often the weakest link and for this reason, it is crucial for individuals and corporations to find alternative solutions that will provide a greater level of security. World Password Day was recently held on 2nd May 2019 and was the perfect time to address this cybersecurity issue.
See below what Colin Truran, Principal Technology Strategist at Quest had to say:
“On World Password Day, the cry each year should surely be “why are we celebrating the use of passwords yet again?” Passwords were created to try to solve the problem of proving identity in a very technologically limited world, far longer ago than the first silicone based computers. Passwords are fundamentally flawed as they are easily shared, often guessed, bypassed with paper and each iteration remains in circulation for far too long. This is probably why we stopped using passwords at international borders since the middle ages. In modern times, technology has caught up in providing far more efficient and accurate ways to prove ones identity, however, in the beginning these were still far too expensive to implement as standard. Only those organisations that truly needed to know who they were letting in bothered to invest, such as defense agencies and pharmaceuticals.
Over the last 5 years we have seen two factor authentication become commonplace but it is still only a small step towards solving the password problem. Today things are starting to change and I am encouraged to hear many more organisations turning to multiple levels of biometric identification, including government bodies. Of course, it’s a huge responsibility to hold such biometric information in our consumer and user base, so this information must itself be protected by something better than a password! Let’s try to make this day a day of remembrance rather than a reminder of our reluctance to let go of an outmoded concept.”
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About Quest Software
Quest provides software solutions for the rapidly-changing world of enterprise IT that help simplify the challenges caused by data explosion, cloud expansion, hybrid datacenters, security threats and regulatory requirements. The company is a global provider to 130,000 companies across 100 countries, including 95% of the Fortune 500 and 90% of the Global 1000. Since 1987, Quest has built a portfolio of solutions which now includes database management, data protection, identity and access management, Microsoft platform management and unified endpoint management. With Quest, organizations spend less time on IT administration and more time on business innovation. For more information, visit www.quest.com.