Change your password again, says Microsoft

Microsoft has made the headlines again. This time for emphasizing the importance of shifting to traditional passwords. According to a report published by Forbes, Microsoft writer and expert in digital security, Suzanne Choney took to Microsoft’s official blog post to write about the importance of killing “the password.” She said it is “time to kill the password.” It goes without saying that it can get pretty tedious to remember passwords, especially if they are a combination of letters, numbers, and characters.

Suzanne, while saying that it is important to change to traditional passwords, said, “Quick: Change your password again. Make sure it has a combination of capital letters, numbers and special characters. Wait, no. Instead, come up with a long random phrase that you should be able to remember. Wait, no. Stop. Stop the madness. It is time to kill the password.”

She further went on to say in the blog post that the above-mentioned paragraph is nothing but a “relic” from the earlier times of computing. It was proven to be helpful back then and helped to keep the criminals at the bay.

However, “more than two-thirds of people use the same, usually not-very-strong password across dozens of different accounts. Weak passwords and stolen identities are the number 1 source of data loss. Last year alone, eighty-one percent of major data breaches could be traced back to one individual’s compromised identity.”

In the post, Choney even went on to explain how the standard approach for changing passwords frequently is generally based on guidance issued back in 2003 by password’s expert, Bill Burr from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The Redmond technology giant has been working towards the eliminations of passwords with the introduction of Windows Hello in Windows 10 operating system. Newer changes are expected to be brought about by users as well.