Each year on the first Thursday in May, World Password Day promotes better password habits. Passwords are critical gatekeepers to our digital identities, allowing us to access online shopping, dating, banking, social media, private work, and life communications.
According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), cybercrime is set to cost the global economy $2.9 million every minute in 2020 and some 80% of these attacks are password-related. Knowledge-based authentication – whether with PINs, passwords, passphrases, or whatever we need to remember – is not only a major headache for users, it is costly to maintain, says the WEF. And for larger businesses, it is estimated that nearly 50 percent of IT help desk costs are allocated to password resets, with average annual spend for companies now at over $1 million for staffing alone.