← Back to context

Comment by II2II

21 hours ago

> If an insurer says "we're going to jack up premiums by 20% unless you force employees to change their password once every 90 days", you can argue till you're blue in the face that it's bad practice, NIST changed its policy to recommend not regularly rotating passwords over a decade ago, etc., and be totally correct... but they're still going to jack up premiums if you don't do it.

I would argue that password policies are very context dependent. As much as I detest changing my password every 90 days, I've worked in places where the culture encouraged password sharing. That sharing creates a whole slew of problems. On top of that, removing the requirement to change passwords every 90 days would encourage very few people to select secure passwords, mostly because they prefer convenience and do not understand the risks.

If you are dealing with an externally facing service where people are willing to choose secure passwords and unwilling to share them, I would agree that regularly changing passwords creates more problems than it solves.

> removing the requirement to change passwords every 90 days would encourage very few people to select secure passwords

When you don’t require them to change it, you can just assign them a random 16 character string and tell them it’s their job to memorize it.

  • There's no way I will ever remember it. I will write it down. Let me choose my own password (passphrase if I need to remember it)