Could passwords be past their use-by date?

For many companies, an over reliance on passwords could be putting their IT security at risk, says Centrify.

Lachlan McKenzie, ANZ manager for Centrify, says the most disturbing observation of his first year in the job was the blind faith businesses were placing on passwords.

"The fact is that compromised credentials are the leading attack vector for data breaches globally," says McKenzie.

McKenzie says that it basically just boils down to pure laziness.

"Because we're expected to remember them, many people choose passwords that are easy to recall – to a ludicrous degree. Recent hacks reveal the most popular passwords include 123456, qwerty and, of course, password," he adds. "Passwords also fail due to poor security habits, such as password sharing. Although we're all warned not to share our passwords with family members or colleagues, people continue to do it.

He says that the solution to this password problem is to use mature security standards such as SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language). Another way is to use multi-facto authentication.

"But the challenge is to encourage businesses to make this sort of protection a priority," comments McKenzie.

Centrify is a global leader in securing enterprise identities against cyberthreats and it's used by more than 5000 customers.

Just last month, Rémy Cointreau announced that it is using Centrify's identity management and mobile management platform to support its 1800 employees globally.

McKenzie adds that Centrify's increased focus on Australia and New Zealand during the past year has attracted new resellers and established an Australian data center.

"Trends such as outsourcing, cloud, mobile and the strong desire to address compromised credentials have also fuelled demand for our solutions in Australia and New Zealand." "It's clear that Centrify is increasingly recognised as the leader in the identity protection space."