ElcomSoft Password Security Survey 2009

ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. has conducted a survey on its customers, and discovered a major security hole in the choice of passwords among respondents. According to poll data, up to 77% of computer users use the same password to protect multiple types of information, making even securely protected data susceptible to the ‘weakest link’ attack.

You can download ElcomSoft Password Security Survey 2009 report in Protable Document Format. File size: 3523 K.

More than 1000 respondents from around the world answered on 6 questions from ElcomSoft. 36 percent respondents came from North America and and 39 percent from Europe.

Elcomsoft Survey 2009: respondents geography

The number of passwords people use in real life is a signifcant measurement. Various applications provide different layers of security; some are virtually unhackable whereas others are vulnerable to malicious attacks. When one and the same password is used to access an application with good encryption and an e-mail account on the Internet, the whole idea of password security becomes obsolete. According to the poll findings, 50 percent of respondents use more than 10 different passwords. While 29 percent have from 4 to 10 passwords, 11 percent claimed to use only from 1 to 3 passwords to get access to websites and applications. This news is a little bit disturbing as 3 passwords used everywhere cannot guarantee proper security, especially when these passwords are used to access both personal and work accounts.

Elcomsoft Survey 2009: how many passwords do you use in a real life?

Password length is another significant factor. The majority – 44 percent – use passwords that are composed of 8 characters or more while 28 percent said their passwords typically contain from 6 to 8 characters. A quarter of users reported that password length depends on where a password is needed. Some respondents claimed, there are financial companies that do not allow password lengths longer than 8 characters. Hopefully, some of them have been relaxing such restriction in the past few years.

Elcomsoft Survey 2009: what is a typical length of your passwords?

To get more information about this survey and its results please download ElcomSoft Password Security Survey 2009 report in Protable Document Format. File size: 3523 K.