Adam On…

Anyone that has attended a security training at my organization knows that I hate passwords. Why you might ask? It is simple. Passwords are a pain! Just us take a look at my daily password entry:

• Password #1: Log into my personal laptop in the morning
• Password #2: Log into personal e-mail account
• Password #3: Log into ESI web site, check logs/stats and update if needed
• Password #4: Log into AdamOn, check logs/stats and update if needed
• Password #5: Log into FeedBurner and check stats
• Password #6: Log into work computer
• Password #7: Log into work e-mail
• Password #8: Open encrypted disk at work

Yup, thats right, I type in 8 different passwords before 8am in the morning! Is it any wonder I hate passwords? Oh, each of these passwords is different then the others. This is a typical morning for me and does not require that I sign into other services such as IM or Twitter or any of my servers. (Doing so can add up to 5 more unique passwords to my daily log on procedures.)

Each day I face a growing contempt for these passwords. They are in my way, preventing me from doing my job in the most efficient manner possible. It is no wonder that people write down passwords, use similar/the same passwords over and over again and use applications to store passwords. Passwords just suck!

It might sound strange to some people that a security professional doesn’t like passwords, but I am not alone. Dr. M.E. Kabay, CTO of the School of Graduate Studies at Norwich University and Program Director for the university’s Masters of Science in Information Assurance, has an excellent set of articles over at Network World about passwords.

The bottom line is that we need a better solution.