These are the same companies that don’t support second factors, only have their app as a second factor, or only SMS second factor. Is it too much to ask for smart card or token (yubikey) support?
I hate that stuff. Also websites that have lots of specific conditions for what a password contains. You’re just increasing the likelihood of me forgetting it.
I started using a password manager for a lot of my passwords. Works pretty well, it’ll generate criteria matching passwords for me. Also functions as a list of websites I’ve created accounts with.
Forgetting it?? All you have to do is scribble it on a little slip of paper in your top drawer like 90% of people do. Very secure.
Top drawer ! I think you it’s still more secure than most of my colleagues. It’s usually a post it on the monitor.
Post it on the monitor is for session password. For the 5 others, there is a txt file on the desktop!
And if you don’t forget it, you’ll use a simple one that’s easy to guess or contains common substitutions, p@$$w0rd!. And then when you do forget it you’ll call support who will reset it, and they get so many calls it will make taking over another account easier.
In case you haven’t already seen it yet there’s The Password Game to drive this point home
I don’t think I’ve gotten past finding the correct length video. Getting that to work with everything else and keeping what’s his face alive is just too much.
Use a password manager my guy
I don’t trust them.
I didn’t either, so I self-host mine via vaultwarden. My passwords never leave my own systems (unless being used to login ofc), except for transit between my server and client devices. That is encrypted before storage or flight then wrapped in tls for https and again for a vpn connection (also self-hosted).
Even locally? https://keepassxc.org/ can be an option
on a work computer?
You can use the manager on your phone to display the password you’re having a hard time remembering sonyou can manually type it in, while still keeping it stored securely instead of just a plain text note on your phone.
You can also login to your password manager via web browser to copy/paste between it and login pages. Wouldn’t be my choice, but it’s an option. (not gonna enter my password vaults details on a work computer unless that vault only contains work logins.)
My company set up two factor for office 365. The type of verification used is the outlook app where you tap on something to gain access. I must have been one of the first to be required to change my password on the stupid 90 day schedule. After changing my 365 account pw I was locked out because I had to log in to the Outlook app and use the outlook app for verification, which didn’t work due to the need to be logged in. You can’t make this shit up.
Perfect security. Nobody can access.
That’s on your IT department.
Well, it’s also on Microsoft for selling their “modern” security theater bullshit to every IT department in the country while not designing it in a sensible fashion or working with third parties to provide meaningful alternatives to the Microsoft branded shit every employee will soon be required to install on their personal devices…
But that’s also on your IT department for not warning you or allowing you to keep the SMS/phone verification as a backup for these exact situations. Those aren’t depreciated yet, but some companies have let Microsoft’s recommend security practices (co-written by their sales team) scare them into downright idiocy.
As someone in IT, here’s what you do: Next time that sort of thing happens, just reach out to them immediately and have them reset everything. They may get annoyed, but you know what? They shouldn’t be. It’s more secure to have an employee call in every single time they need to change a password or re-authenticate a device. It’s inconvenient, unnecessary, and downright annoying, wasting everyone’s valuable time, but hey…it’s more "secure’. If it’s more secure, you aren’t allowed to be against it.
you and @CodingCarpenter@lemm.ee must use the same system.
BasePassword + today’s date reporting for duty.
What about when you go and log in tomorrow?
Maintain security by changing passwords every day. Easy.
Best security: change the password every Planck unit of time.
Rotating passkeys are pretty secure.
Any Insurance company * (I say so because as an IT Administrator I’m forced to enable this to keep our cyber insurance policy, but I feel rather confident it’s unnecessary given the research and our migration to ldap tied fido).
I’m in this boat and I hate it.
I’ll drink to that!
All I know is the mortgage servicing company I use seems to have started ~3 month interval, that they don’t say (no second factor available either). When I went to pay my internet bill, I get greeted with a message “you’re passwords been reset”. I’m stubborn and I was just using those sites to pay bills, so now I just don’t log in to those anymore.
Insurance, and government need to catch up to the research. For sites that support them, I really like the Yubikey as a second factor.
It won’t be too long now before everyone rolls out Passkey support, which will be nice. I fully embrace the death of the password.
I like your optimism.
And the death of Firefox along with that. Oh boy what a great future.
Not sure why that would kill Firefox. Mozilla has done great work supporting passkeys and while their implementation isn’t fully baked at the moment I have no reason to suspect they’ll leave it incomplete.
Every few months my company forces a password reset. We recently changed from four digit pins to full true passwords but they don’t actually explain that so now you have people with like 13 digit pins it’s insane. On top of that they also use two-factor Authentication simply to make things harder I believe.
Finally if you want your work email on your phone it forces you to re login every single week and because of the way Outlook mobile works you need this special number from Outlook on your phone so to log into outlook on my phone I have to authenticate with Outlook on my phone
0118 999 881 99 911 9725 3
Finally an emergency phone number that i can remember
13 digit pins? You mean my phone number and birthdate?
I’d be lying if I said I haven’t considered it. It’s still calls them pins even though it allows for basically any character
Mine rotates every 3 months for a 4-digit pin… Can’t use a longer one, no 2fa.
Both companies I work for use Okta for 2fa AND also force us to change our passwords every 90 days, resulting in us using weak, easy to remember passwords. It’s security theater.
I’m IT in a company that has this policy. Blame the cyber insurance.
we have one piece of remote software that requires 90-day resets, but half the time the process is bugged so we end up having to have a new password relayed to us in the clear… through email. third-party email. it’s only 100s of thousands of medical records on the other side of that login. no big.
I don’t have any first hand experience, but anecdotes I hear, Medical and Banking have some of the worst password/security practices.
I’m glad that in my company they disabled the password rotation after having implemented 2FA
Mine went to once a year for most systems. There is probably an external requirement somewhere that says they need to be changed periodically and once a year is the lowest frequency they can do.
