Password Requirements: Myths and Madness
In the b2b world it's basically impossible to improve password policies. Most of the onerous examples only exist because some other entity (a customer, insurance company, parent company, etc) has demanded them. The problem is that the demand isn't being made by security professionals, it's being made by risk management people who are only interested in a simple way to mitigate risk - it's simply much easier for them to reach for an obvious and easily testable policy with character counts, expiry, no autocomplete, etc.<p>Even if you manage to convince one of them to accept something a little more forward-thinking and less user-hostile, it's only a matter of time before Big Customer X comes along with their antiquated requirements and you have to choose between doing what they want or losing that business.