Password Practices

Cybersecurity in government has been a punching bag for years. Most experts agree it's pretty bad -- scary bad. But when it comes to passwords, federal managers are more careful than their private sector counterparts.

In a recent cybersecurity survey conducted by the Government Business Council, a Nextgov sister organization at Atlantic Media, about three-quarters of respondents said they always develop unique personal passwords.

According to an informal survey done in March by an employee at the security firm Symantec, only 18 percent have a different password for each online account. And the cybersecurity firm Sophos reported about the same finding in an online survey it conducted in March as well: 19 percent of website users use multiple unique passwords.

Comparing these surveys may be a bit unfair given they are asking slightly different questions. But even if the number of federal employees who say they use a unique password for different accounts is overstated a bit, it still reflects well on government cybersecurity practices -- which has rarely been the case.