Thursday, May 6 is World Password Day, a day dedicated to promoting safer password practices. Strong password management has been especially important as cyberattacks have skyrocketed since the onset of the pandemic and the switch to remote work. Here, security executives share their insight and tips on how to create and promote safer password practices in the enterprise and among employees.

While password spraying results in the infiltration of many accounts every year, it’s also one of the easiest attacks for cyber-aware employees to thwart. In other words, password spraying needs to be a top consideration for any successful cybersecurity platform.

In order to report on how secure the average American’s password is, the Safety.com research team conducted a survey of 1,210 US residents about the length and complexity of their passwords: 67.3% of survey respondents said their average password was equal to or less than eight characters long; 7.8% of respondents said their average password was less than five characters long; 19.3% of respondents said their average password was fifteen characters or more; Adults younger than 25 and older than 55 were amongst the groups with the shortest passwords.

With mobile usage a dominant channel going forward, authentication techniques need to move beyond two steps forward for authentication and one step backward for user experience. Just as passwords are being discarded because of the high friction they create for users, new multi-factor authentication techniques are moving in.