A new report from Cybersecurity Ventures and Thycotic estimates the number of passwords will grow exponentially over the next three years.
Co-written by Cybersecurity Ventures' Editor-in-Chief Steve Morgan and Thycotic's Joseph Carson, the report closely analyzed the current IT security market. Here are three things to know from the report.
1. The Internet of Things will cause more machine passwords to be created. Intel, IDC and the United Nations predict the number of IoT devices will increase from 15 billion in 2015 to 200 billion by 2020. Though not all IoT devices will require a password, they may store a password that connects them to a network.
2. As more people get online, more passwords will be created. The Microsoft Secure Blog estimates four billion people will have an online presence by 2020. Cybersecurity Ventures assumes each user will utilize about 25 passwords. Based on this postulation, Cybersecurity Ventures believes at least 100 billion human passwords will exist by 2020.
3. The number of passwords used around the world will drastically increase by 2020. There are currently about 90 billion passwords used today. By adding both the number of machine passwords and the number of human passwords, Cybersecurity Ventures estimates there will be 300 billion passwords requiring cyber protection by 2020.