Password Manager Usability - Pervasive Computing Laboratory

In our daily lives using IT systems there is an undeniable pattern that is routinely repeated: access to a huge number of password-protected services. In this regard, though deploying and enforcing strong password policies is a mean to increase security against online breaches and data leaks, it also imposes a significant usability burden for users. To alleviate this problem, Password Managers (PMs) are pointed out as user-friendly tools that automate the processes of password generation and login. But how secure and usable are Password Managers?

At PerLab, we have conducted a research study to analyze the four most popular PMs with free version from both security and usability perspectives. Results has been published in the following articles:

Sunyoung Seiler-Hwang, Patricia Arias-Cabarcos, Andrés Marín, Florina Almenares, Daniel Díaz-Sánchez, Christian Becker: I Don'T See Why I Would Ever Want to Use It: Analyzing the Usability of Popular Smartphone Password Managers. In: Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, pp. 1937–1953, The 26th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security ACM, London, United Kingdom, 2019, ISBN: 978-1-4503-6747-9.

Patricia Arias-Cabarcos, Andrés Marín, Diego Palacios, Florina Almenárez, Daniel Díaz-Sánchez: Comparing Password Management Software: Toward Usable and Secure Enterprise Authentication. In: IT Professional, vol. 18, iss. 5, pp. 34-40, 2016, ISSN: 1941-045X.