One password too many

weekly roundup As a kid, I made a sport out of remembering as many phone numbers as I could. I actually got pretty good at it--so much so that my parents would use me as their phone directory when they needed to call a relative.

All that changed when I got my first mobile phone. But without caller ID (this was back in the late-90s), I still had to learn to recognize the number of my friends so I would know who was calling. However, as the number of contacts stored in my mobile grew from 2 to over 200--and caller ID became a common feature--I eventually decided not to overwork my memory cells.

These days, I'm lucky if I remember where I parked my car.

So, I was stunned when a study this week revealed that 36 percent of business users said they manage more than 15 passwords at one time in order to access various work-related applications, while 18 percent juggle between six and 15 passwords.

That's a whole lot of alphanumeric chunks to remember. Small wonder that some resort to stuffing pieces of paper with their passwords scribbled on it under the keyboard or behind the monitor.

In the early 2000s, several security vendors had pushed single sign-on (SSO) as a solution to this problem. It allows access to all applications that the user is given via a single ID and password. But SSO is not infallible.

But having to remember more than 15 passwords at one time is definitely not the way forward. And with the advent of new security tools such as biometrics and smartcards, I'm surprised that business users today are still made to manage such a high number of passwords.

What will it take for passwords to be a thing of the past?

In other news this week, find out why some people are talking like pirates and why the family of SingTel's Chua Sock Koong will probably be out celebrating this weekend. Also, bookworms may soon be flocking to Singapore's subway stations while one CTO will likely stay away from Windows Vista.