Passwords are not the best of security solutions, as enterprises and individual users have found over the years. They can be cracked or stolen, and not necessarily by high-tech means either.
Often, passwords created by end users in corporations are simple, being based on numbers significant to them: their birth dates, wedding anniversaries, birth dates of their loved ones, their auto licenses plates or a combination of these.
Or, where the passwords are created by the system administrator, end users tend to leave them exposed. "You'll see Post-it notes on users' computer screens with their passwords, or the Post-its are stuck under the table," Chris Collier, vice president, identity solutions, at IdentiPHI, told TechNewsWorld.
Increasingly, enterprises are looking to biometric solutions -- fingerprint, palm or retina scanning among them -- to secure access to their computers.