2022 Password Decisions Survey

The 2022 Password Decisions Survey posed questions to IT decision makers about password sharing practices, technologies in use, security risks, and the Great Resignation. While there are bright spots, password and security practices remain a challenge many companies still need to address.

In November 2021, Bitwarden partnered with Propeller Insights to poll over 400 independent IT decision makers across a wide range of industries who play a key role in enterprise purchasing decisions. The findings show an uptick in password manager usage, indicating its increasingly mainstream appeal. Concurrently, IT decision makers continue to struggle with adhering to security best practices and express security-related unease about remote work. 

While password best practices are improving among IT decision makers, there is still a long way to go:

• 2FA (two-factor authentication) is now mainstream, with 88% of respondents using it at work

• Despite the increase in password manager use and 2FA, more than half (53%) of IT decision makers still share passwords with colleagues via email, a 14% jump from last year due in part to the sudden shift to remote work

• Nearly half (41%) share passwords over chat and 31% share passwords in conversation

Ransomware, phishing, and cyberattacks continue, yet many organizations still lack a mitigation strategy:

• More than half (54%) of IT decision makers admit their organization has experienced a cyberattack

• While two-thirds of organizations have a ransomware mitigation strategy in place, 25% do not have one or are not sure 

• Phishing attacks remain a scourge: emails purporting to be from financial institutions (35%) or a government entity (22%) are the most common

Remote work and the Great Resignation are impacting cybersecurity:

• Almost two-thirds (61%) of respondents are “more concerned” about cybersecurity this year and attribute this to the fear that employees working remotely may be more lax about their overall security hygiene

• Almost half (48%) are working more hours than last year, with 58% faulting turnover (29%) and difficulty hiring (29%) as the primary culprits