Using passwords with Microsoft Accounts? Stop and Go Passwordless

The problem with passwords
My friend, Bret Arsenault, our Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) here at Microsoft likes to say, “Hackers don’t break in, they log in.” That has stuck with me ever since I first heard him say it because it’s so true.

Weak passwords are the entry point for the majority of attacks across enterprise and consumer accounts. There are a whopping 579 password attacks every second—that’s 18 billion every year.

Why are passwords so vulnerable? There are two big reasons.

Human nature
Except for auto-generated passwords that are nearly impossible to remember, we largely create our own passwords. But, given the vulnerability of passwords, requirements for them have gotten increasingly complex in recent years, including multiple symbols, numbers, case sensitivity, and disallowing previous passwords. Updates are often required on a regular basis, yet to create passwords that are both secure enough and memorable enough is a challenge. Passwords are incredibly inconvenient to create, remember, and manage across all the accounts in our lives.