Don’t Give Up Your Passwords

Abstract

Jackie, a newly hired HR database administrator (DBA) at a major state university, has several years’ professional experience working with big data. In her first week Jackie is “on-boarded” into the position. She is immediately granted full access to a large number of university systems and databases, which have disparate password and access requirements. Because of an absence of coherence across departments and university subunits (which is typical of large organizations), Jackie has to learn several new logon procedures for these assets. Some of the more sensitive systems at the university depend on “two-factor” authentication, requiring Jackie to use a physical identity (sometimes called an authentication or cryptographic) token in combination with a password.