More than Half of Employees Still Rely on Username and Password as Primary Authentication Method

Yubico, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based provider of hardware authentication security keys revealed results of its inaugural State of Global Enterprise Authentication Survey 2022 at a security thought-leadership industry summit. The survey, conducted for Yubico by Censuswide, polled 16,000+ employees across a variety of enterprises in eight countries and asked about their perceptions and perceived challenges of MFA, security tools and internal security practices at their organization, and their recent experiences with cyberattacks.

While the survey revealed numerous data points, these telling cybersecurity authentication and MFA trends surfaced to the top:

• 59% of employees still rely on username and password as their primary method to authenticate into accounts
• Nearly 54% of employees admit to writing down or sharing a password
• Over 22% of those surveyed still think username and password is the most secure method of authentication
• 61% of employees think their organization needs to upgrade to modern phishing-resistant MFA and 79% of VP-level staff want their organization to upgrade to modern phishing-resistant MFA (like hardware security keys)
• More than 54% of employees are not required to go through cybersecurity training on a frequent basis
• Over the last 12 months, nearly 57% admit to using a work issued device for personal use
• Within the last 2 years, nearly 40% of survey respondents admit to having broken their mobile phone and nearly 30% have lost it (a device organizations commonly use to authenticate)

Stina Ehrensvärd, CEO and co-founder of Yubic, said in a statement, “The results from Yubico’s global survey highlight the biggest concerns, challenges and real-world scenarios that organizations are facing globally when it comes to their cybersecurity efforts – including the continued reliance on legacy MFA solutions like one-time passwords. It’s a stark reminder of how far the enterprise still has to go to adopting and standardizing phishing-resistant MFA tools.”

If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our digital newsletters!