Password Complexity: Outdated Rules vs Modern Guidance
Why forced complexity rules backfire, what NIST and NCSC recommend instead, and how to write better password policies.
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Tags: security, passwords, best-practices
Password Complexity Requirements: Are They Helping or Hurting? Almost every system you've ever created an account on has demanded: at least one uppercase letter, at least one number, at least one symbol. These rules feel like common sense security. Research shows they often produce the opposite of their intended effect. This is one of the more counterintuitive findings in security research, and it has practical consequences for anyone designing login systems. Where Complexity Requirements Came From The rationale for complexity requirements is sound in principle: if a password uses more character types, the search space is larger, and brute force takes longer. Adding symbols to a password increases the character set from 62 to 94 characters, multiplying the keyspace by ~1.5 per position.…
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