A bold prediction: Passwords to be obsolete within 5 years

Passwords are still the preferred authentication method despite of it's numerous deficiencies. Although two-factor authentication, iris scans and fingerprints are considered by experts as the more reliable alternatives, we still rely on this basic protection to safeguard sensitive data and personal files. Just over 70% of IT companies, partially or fully intend to change that in the near future, according to a survey of Wakefield Research among companies in the US and Europe.

Most respondents plan to move away from passwords in the next five years and shift to more reliable methods for user authentication. Recent security breaches recorder by number of corporations, had resulted in theft of passwords and other personal data. A striking example is the Yahoo hack, in which hackers stole about 500 million accounts' passwords. Besides being a direct threat to users, easily hackable passwords and logins threaten security of the services themselves. Most people do not bother to implement complex passwords, resulting in gaps, exploited by hackers to easily penetrate into the system. In other cases, consumers come up with a fairly complex password but re-use it on all of their accounts. If hackers get access to one service, all accounts become vulnerable. Examples like those demonstrate that passwords are insufficient as a sole means of protection. The IT security company SecureAuth, believes that the key to solution of the problem with passwords are one-off security codes, sent to the user by phone or e-mail during the login process.

In other words, experts recommend two-factor authentication that has already proven its reliability, especially for such critical areas as online banking. According to experts in IT security, Biometrics together with dual-factor authentication are on the way to completely replace traditional passwords and logins.