Password fatigue is the feeling experienced by many people who are required to remember an excessive number of passwords as part of their daily routine, such as to to a computer at work, undo a bicycle lock or conduct banking from an automated teller machine. The concept is also known as password chaos, or more broadly as identity chaos. See [1]
Password fatigue is a feeling of stress and/or frustration stemming from the creation and maintenance of passwords for the multitude of accounts managed by any active digital user. See [2]
Password fatigue is a condition that occurs when trying to create, remember and use different complex passwords for each of our online accounts. This malady places undue stress not just on individual users but on organizations and security professionals striving to protect critical data and other assets. See [5]
The average adult has at least 100 passwords to keep track of, and the majority of Americans say they’re locked out of an average of 10 accounts per month. It’s impossible to remember all the passwords that safeguard our daily lives. The seemingly endless need to remember or reset passwords can wear people down, resulting in risky behavior. One study revealed that 92 percent of people are aware of the security risk associated with reusing passwords, but 65 percent reuse them anyway. See [6]
Even worse, giving in to password fatigue can cripple an organization financially, with breaches caused by stolen or compromised credentials costing an average of $4.05M USD, and taking an average of 327 days to detect and contain. See [2]
Researchers (see [4]) report that: “Password fatigue at least moderately affected the lives of 87% of those surveyed. Password requirements, mandatory changes, security questions, and other measures taken by companies in an effort to secure user accounts have led to a great deal of confusion and stress for those trying to keep track of passwords in both professional and personal settings.
Over three-quarters of those we surveyed reported password fatigue as negatively affecting their productivity and mental health. It might be easy to see why younger generations, who have grown up with tech and tend to use it more frequently than older generations, actually reported the highest level of password fatigue. In fact, Gen Z has struggled with passwords in the pastover half of the “digital natives” we surveyed reported high password fatigue, compared to only 29% of baby boomers.
Our study found that reusing passwords across multiple work accounts was actually slightly more common (80%) than it was for all accounts (73%). These same habits led to over 75% of those surveyed reporting they’d had to utilize account recovery methods to access their work accounts at least once a month. The work it took to do so is quantifiable, and the time it took to remember and recover passwords was no small figure either. On average, employers spent $480 per employee on time wasted due to password issues alone. For those who reported high password fatigue, the cost jumped all the way to $670 per employee.” See [4]
Asked how they currently stored their passwords, 72% of the respondents said they save them online, 57% store them locally on their computer, 37% write them down and 11% try to memorize them. People naturally turn to different methods to store or manage their passwords. Some use Microsoft Office or the Google Workspace suite, meaning they save their passwords in clear text in a document or spreadsheet. Others rely on a password manager or a browser’s autosave function.
Some people turn to multiple ways to juggle their passwords. But that can lead to greater stress. The survey found that individuals with high password fatigue generally rely on numerous methods for storing and managing their passwords, while those with low password fatigue typically use a minimal number of methods. [5]
As we can see from the above, if we use a single method where we can generate all different strong passwords with a single click we reduce password fatigue to the minimal value.
Public dynamical passwords generators (DPGs) allow any person to generate and manage 20 different strong passwords for different online accounts with a single click for free (see dynpass.online). Private DPGs allow to generate and manage 100 super strong different passwords for different online accounts with a single click.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_fatigue
https://arcticwolf.com/resources/glossary/password-fatigue/
https://jumpcloud.com/blog/password-fatigue
https://www.beyondidentity.com/blog/measuring-password-fatigue
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/password-fatigue-cost-organizations-time-money-mental-energy/
https://biztechmagazine.com/article/2023/02/password-fatigue-real-heres-what-businesses-need-know
