Re:Study: 'Security Fatigue' May Weaken Digital Defenses
by mysteria on Monday March 23, 2026 @11:40AM
(#47491034)
I remember a case where a company decided to assign employees random 16 character passwords with symbols and rotated them every 90 days or so. They were unchangeable and the idea was that everyone would be forced to use a secure password that changed regularly.
You can probably guess what happened, and that was that no one remembered their passwords and people wrote it down on their pads or sticky notes instead.
Re:Study: 'Security Fatigue' May Weaken Digital Defenses
by bluGill on Monday March 23, 2026 @12:15PM
(#47491523)
Writing down a password is a great option. However you need to keep that paper in a secure location. Put it in your wallet and treat it like a $100 bill - don't paste it to a monitor or under the keyboard.
A password manager is better for most things, but you need to unlock the password manager somehow.
Re:Study: 'Security Fatigue' May Weaken Digital Defenses
by GoblinSlayer on Monday March 23, 2026 @12:10PM
(#47491460)
Also "app passwords". Not just change, you can't even append text to it.
Re:Study: 'Security Fatigue' May Weaken Digital Defenses
by SAI_Peregrinus on Monday March 23, 2026 @12:22PM
(#47491611)
Those are just API keys people can type.
The effect of that is that by requiring frequent rotation, the organization is effectively training their users to have a single permanent password and to never change it, even after a compromise. That's extremely harmful. At least with permanent passwords that are force rotated after they show up in database or there has been an incident, you have a much higher percentage of compliance with making new passwords, and the organization is safer because everyone isn't using passwords derived from the previous password.