The Homa Files

Interesting factoids reported in Business Week …

Punch line: Make your passwords 9 characters long with letters & numbers … and at least 1 capital letter and one special character.

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Users who choose a common word or simple key combination for a password: 50%

Most-used passwords: 123456, password, 12345678, qwerty, abc123

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Time it takes a hacker’s computer to randomly guess your password:

Length: 6 characters
Lowercase: 10 minutes
+ Uppercase: 10 hours
+ Nos. & Symbols: 18 days

Length: 7 characters
Lowercase: 4 hours
+ Uppercase: 23 days
+ Nos. & Symbols: 4 years

Length: 8 characters
Lowercase: 4 days
+ Uppercase: 3 years
+ Nos. & Symbols: 463 years

Length: 9 characters
Lowercase: 4 months
+ Uppercase: 178 years
+ Nos. & Symbols: 44,530 years

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Average amount it costs a business to field a phone call requesting a password reset: $10

Proportion of help desk calls that are password-related: 30%

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Data: Gartner, Forrester, Duo Security, Imperva, LastBit Software

BW Magazine, The Problem with Passwords, January 31, 2011

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