Password Protection: End User Security Behavior

Abstract

Password authentication is one of essential services in our life for protecting data. In other words, we may loose a lot of money, sensitive data, etc., if passwords leak out. Thus, we have to understand clearly what is important for creating and/or changing passwords. Our goal is to analyze key issues for setting passwords. We surveyed 262 students of the University of Aizu, Japan. We discussed key security problems, main password protection issues and techniques, and misunderstandings about passwords by end users. Furthermore, we compared the obtained data with results provided by the National Institute of Standard Technology (NIST) and others. The results can help the users set stronger passwords.