Have you noticed how even as a student you have two dozens of passwords to log in to several applications and services? Add IM’s, private emails and you get a recipe for disaster. But for us, it will get worse. Most companies still think the more passwords you have the more secure their system becomes. Wrong. First of all, it is more expensive because people end up calling the help desk if they lose their password and let’s be honest: The more passwords you have to remember, the more likely you end up needing support of some sort. Secondly, people start sharing passwords with co-workers or write them down on sticky notes. Not very secure, is it?
Several companies are working on single sign-on solutions but no real breakthrough is in sight. Well it looks like life long learning will involve memorizing passwords for us for quite some time. Basically, a password is something we know. Something we have could be a key card, but what if you lose it? Something you are would be biometrics but that’s not a 100% reliable and as of now expensive.
Well, no real solution here for you, just many questions. Maybe that would be nice postgrad project – most likely resulting in a high destinction, a dropout and millions of dollars.
