LastPass has released its annual ‘Psychology of Passwords’ report and it’s, “Uncovered an alarming disparity between consumers’ perceived sense of cybersecurity online and their actual behaviours” despite an increase in cybersecurity education.
The findings demonstrate significant generational differences, but LastPass states, “Overall, it is clear there is a false sense of cybersecurity running rampant among consumers, no matter the age.”
Key findings include:
- Gen Z is most confident when it comes to their password management, while also being the biggest offenders of poor password hygiene. Gen Z believes their password methods to be “very safe.” However, they’re also most likely to recognise that using the same or similar password for multiple logins is a risk, but they use a variation of a single password 69 per cent of the time.
- Cybersecurity education isn’t translating to action. With 65 per cent of those surveyed claiming to have some type of cybersecurity education, the majority (79 per cent) found their education to be effective, whether formal or informal. But of those who received cybersecurity education, only 31 per cent stopped reusing passwords. And only 25 per cent started using a password manager.
- While 89 per cent of respondents acknowledged that using the same password or variation is a risk, only 12 per cent use different passwords for different accounts and 62 per cent always or mostly use the same password or a variation. To add to that, compared to last year, people are now increasingly using variations of the same password, with 41 per cent in 2022 vs. 36 per cent in 2021.
