Today is World Password Day, and how is Intel celebrating it? By telling people to abandon passwords and adopt a more secure authentication method, of course. It might seem a little rude to blast passwords on a day dedicated to them, but the company has hard data to support its stance.
Intel recently conducted a study that dipped into the way that consumers think about passwords. According to their findings, the average person has 27 different logins for various accounts spanning both personal and work use — and 37 percent of respondents forget at least one of those passwords every week.
This can be a very frustrating experience; 21 percent of the people polled stated that forgetting a password was just as annoying as getting a paper cut. What’s more, they would go to great lengths to avoid this scenario, as 6.5 percent of respondents claimed they would even give up pizza so long as they would never have to remember a password ever again.
Passwords are our primary method of defense against unauthorized access, but the more complex and varied they are made, the more difficult it is for the user to retain them all. Fortunately, Intel isn’t just looking to find fault for no reason — the company feels that it has a better solution waiting in the wings.
True Key is an app that performs all the functions of a standard password manager, alongside some useful extras. It’s a quick and easy way to use two-factor authentication on your important accounts, and it also lets you confirm your identity via facial recognition or a fingerprint scanner, depending on the capabilities of your device.
For now, True Key acts as a handy way of gaining convenient access to all your accounts while your login credentials are kept safe and secure, but Intel hopes that in time it will help retire passwords altogether. For more information on the project, head to the Intel website.
