User Names and Passwords Considered Costly and Insecure For Consumers

Passwords and other security measures in place to protect our identity and our information when dealing with an organization are important. In fact, American consumers will select companies with which they will do business based on how secure they feel their information is. As companies continue to establish contact center operations overseas, the topic of information security is at the forefront of the consumer’s mind.

The importance that is put on the protection of passwords could be actually be considered a cultural element. Rainbow Technologies conducted a survey that found that UK organizations are more security conscious with passwords than France and Germany.

The survey also discovered results that revealed that the use of user names and passwords as a means of securing data and applications is both costly and insecure. The more organizations do to try and strengthen their password methods, the higher the cost.

Roughly 2,500 IT administrators, executive management and security professionals in Western Europe responded to the European survey. About 45 percent of participants were British and roughly 25 percent were French and another 25 percent, German. The remaining 5 percent consisted of other countries.

These survey results actually closely mirror those from a North American study where a survey of user names and password usage was conducted on a sample consisting of 3,000 participants. The survey concluded that user names and passwords were inherently insecure. The higher number of user names and passwords maintained by European users, coupled with the higher frequency of changing individual user names and passwords, indicates that this “free” method of authentication in reality carries a high cost.

When also considering the downtime associated with the inability of users to log in to business-critical data and applications, there appears to be a significant hidden cost to using user names and passwords in a variety of computing environments.

While these surveys do give good indication into the problems associated with user names and passwords, it does not present an alternative to the practice that could offer more security and a reduced cost. As contact centers continue to move toward offering multi-channel interaction points, the need for user names and passwords or some other form of secure identification method for self-service continues to grow.

Until a better method can be proven to be user-friendly and a benefit to the company’s bottom line, while also offering improved security, user names and passwords may be the only option for the customer in a self-service environment. If these put the customer at an increased risk, that may just be par for the course until changes can be made. Until then, consumers will have to be their own checks and balances to ensure that their information is safe.


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Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.