Passwords are a pain, but new thinking about passwords and some new tools make it possible to make passwords easier to manage and more effective.

Passwords are expensive for IT staff to manage. Security managers need to create and enforce policies to define the length and characteristics of user passwords and require users to make regular changes. Security managers must also change passwords when they're lost and give users access to systems when passwords are forgotten. All of this management is time-consuming and expensive for the help desk and other IT staff.

By Wayne Rash at Security Pipeline.

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