Password Statistics Small Businesses Should Know

Written by wordpress January 18, 2025

A password is crucial in protecting a device and confidential data on it from unauthorized access. Do small business owners create secure passwords? Read the latest password statistics below.

We have collected key password statistics to help you understand the state of password security. Going through these password stats will help you plan robust password management in your company.

Let’s dive in:

Why Is Password Management Important to Small Businesses?

Here are key reasons why you should focus on password management in your business:

Users tend to follow poor password habits and avoid creating strong passwords
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) can be easily implemented if you use a password manager
Password management allows you to monitor compliance and check if there are compromised credentials related to your company available on the dark web
You can easily record password reset with a password manager
Password management can save you time and money you would otherwise spend on lost passwords

Poor password security can lead to a data breach or other cyber incidents.

Utilizing a password manager simplifies the management of passwords and promotes effective password management practices within your company.

Password Reuse Statistics

If you often reuse passwords, it is crucial to stop this practice right away. Additionally, make it a habit to change your passwords regularly to enhance the cybersecurity of your business.

The following password security statistics will help you understand the state of password reuse.

A Google survey reports that 65% of people reuse the same password for multiple accounts or all accounts.
Even though reusing passwords poses security threats, employees reuse passwords 13 times. Using a good password manager can quickly solve this issue.

Are you wondering why people reuse their passwords?

The following stats from the Psychology of Passwords report will help you understand:

Remembering all passwords is quite a task. So there is no surprise that 68% of people who reuse passwords are afraid of forgetting them
People want to be in control of all their passwords, which is why 52% of people prefer reusing passwords
Among those who reuse their passwords, 36% believe their accounts are not valuable enough to draw the interest of hackers.
People use the same passwords for multiple accounts despite being aware of the risk. The same report notes that 92% of people understand the risk of using the same password or its variations

Password Theft Statistics

If you want to create strong work or personal passwords, you should use at least 12 characters in your passwords. This is because it will need 62 trillion times longer to crack complex 12-character passwords than six-character passwords created using lowercase letters.
Creating strong passwords for multiple online accounts is tough, let alone remembering those passwords. So, people use common passwords. In fact, 73% of online accounts are protected by duplicate passwords. And more than half of the people are not familiar with two-factor authentication.
Password dumper malware attacks copy and steal save passwords. 40% of malware-related breaches were caused by password dumper malware

Strong passwords keep your work and personal accounts safe from unauthorized access. However, people are still not taking suitable security measures to ensure data security.

The following password security stats collected from a Google survey will help you understand how user behavior weakens the security of passwords:

Sharing passwords with others is considered a poor practice. Nevertheless, 43% of Americans have shared their passwords with someone else.
Despite the fact that two-factor authentication improves the security of password-protected accounts, only 37% of Americans use two-factor authentication
Common passwords that are easy to guess put both professional and personal accounts at risk. Research shows that 27% of individuals have tried to guess another person’s password, and among those, 17% were successful.

Two-Factor Authentication Statistics

Here are key findings from the State of the Auth Report prepared by Duo:

Among employed professionals, 79% utilize two-factor authentication (2FA), while 60% of self-employed individuals also adopt this security measure.
SMS (85%) is the most commonly used second factor, then comes email (74%) and mobile passcode (44%)

Here are 2FA stats from the State of Password And Authentication Security Behaviors Report:

Mobile authenticator apps are a quick, easy way to authenticate users. 37% of companies that employ two-factor authentication rely on mobile authentication apps.
A total of 65% of users feel that implementing biometric authentication would enhance the security of their accounts.
Technology and software companies are most likely to use two-factor authentication.

Weak Password Statistics

The following weak password statistics from the Avast survey will encourage you to implement a strong password policy in your company:

83% of Americans use weak passwords. And 16% of people use their own name or a family member’s name as a password
Surprisingly, people don’t change their password even after compromised account security. Only 23% of people change their passwords after being informed about a data breach. There are multiple tools like this, to check if your passwords appeared in any data breaches.
Cybersecurity experts recommend that people should change their passwords periodically. But only 20% of Americans change their passwords frequently every three months. And 18% of people never change their passwords.

Password Security and Cybercrime Statistics

Here are essential business password statistics from Keeper’s survey:

Many employees continue to use sticky notes for saving their work passwords. In fact, 57% of employees manage their work passwords this way.
Saving work passwords in plain text is another bad habit, which 49% of employees still do.
Sharing passwords with other employees via emails or text messages weakens cybersecurity. However, 62% of employees share their work passwords by email or text.
Disabling the accounts of your previous employees should be one of the top priorities of your IT department. This is because 32% of employees can access online accounts belonging to previous employers, meaning many companies don’t disable accounts when employers leave the companies.
Sharing work passwords with family members can enable unauthorized people to access data. And 11% of employees share work-related passwords with a family member. So, you should make strict rules about password sharing.

Password Manager Statistics

A good password manager app can help create, save, share, and manage passwords safely with multi-factor authentication and local data encryption. But still, internet users are not leveraging this powerful tool to boost online security.

Here are key password manager stats from a survey conducted by Security.org:

71% of people don’t use password managers because they don’t believe password managers are secure.
Only 20% of people use password managers to manage or store online account passwords. And LastPass is the most popular manager, and then come Keeper security and McAfee True.
71% of people who use password managers do so because they cannot remember their passwords
Encryption offers an additional layer of security. 34% of people use a password manager because it allows them to encrypt saved passwords
To access your login credentials in a password manager app, you must create a strong master password. While 81% of individuals generate unique master passwords, 19% continue to reuse their master passwords.
All good password managers allow users to sync passwords on multiple devices. And mobile devices offer ease of use. So, it is no surprise that 77% of people use mobile devices to access their password manager apps, and 75% of people use laptop/desktop computers for the same.
69% of people would consider using a password manager app in the future for online accounts
59% of companies rely on human memory to manage passwords. When people rely on their memory to remember passwords, they are likely to create common passwords that are easy to hack.

What Percentage of Data Breaches Are Caused by Passwords?

According to a Verizon report, 80% of hacking-related breaches are caused by password-related issues (brute force or the use of lost/stolen credentials.

What Percentage of People Have Weak Passwords?

83% of Americans use weak passwords, according to a survey done by Avast. To create a strong password, you must include special characters, numbers, and upper and lower case letters. Also, you should create a password of at least ten characters long.

What Percentage of People Use the Same Password for Everything?

According to a Google survey, 13% of individuals use the same password for all their accounts, while 52% reuse the same password across several (but not all) online accounts.

What Percentage of People Use ‘Password’ as Their Password?

24% of people in the US use password 123456 or admin as their password, according to a Google poll. People use a common password to remember it easily.

How Are Most Passwords Stolen?

Phishing is the most commonly used password-stealing technique. Other common methods hackers employ to steal passwords are social engineering, malware, brute force, keystroke logging, and credential stuffing.

Final Thoughts

Now that you know the latest password statistics. It is time to revisit your password policy. Ensure that your company’s average password length is more than ten characters and that all your employees use multi-factor authentication. Using a good password manager can make password management easier in your company.

What are you waiting for? Take the next step based on these latest password statistics.

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Image: Envato Elements

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