Is My Password Strong Enough?: A Study on User Perception in The Developing World

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The first line of defense in the cyber world is strong and difficult to predict passwords. However, usersoften choose highly predictable passwords based on personal information, dictionary words, birth date, etc.OBJECTIVES: The primary objective is to ascertain password choice and practices of users of developing countries.METHODS: Most of the existing studies are done in the developed world and our exhaustive search failed to find similarresearch in the context of developing countries. Here, we conducted detailed surveybased scrutiny about the password-based security perceptions of Bangladeshi nationals, which include 881 participants, primarily students, and professionals.RESULTS: Most of the users were found to have bad practices, for example, having personal information(56%), passwordreuse(69%), having commonly used patterns(81.3%). Students from technical backgrounds fared well compared tonon-technical backgrounds as expected. However, some professionals (especially Bankers) surprisingly chose weakerpasswords even though dealing with sensitive data.CONCLUSION: We also make a few recommendations to improve awareness.

Keywords

• password strength
• user perception
• password policy
• security
• usability
• memorability