22 percent of data breaches are caused by compromised credentials

The survey, conducted by the Cloud Security Alliance also found that 65% of respondents said the likelihood that their company would experience a breach in the future due to compromised credentials was medium to high.

Separately, a Lieberman Software survey of almost 200 attendees at the RSA Conference 2016 found that 55% of IT professionals require their users to change their passwords more frequently than they change their own admin credentials. 10% of IT professionals never change their administrative passwords at all, and 74 percent change them only on a monthly or less frequent basis.

36% of IT professionals said passwords are shared among their IT staff, and 15% said that if they left their current companies, they would still be able to gain remote access with their admin credentials.

A separate SecureAuth survey, conducted in conjunction with Wakefield Research, found that 35 % of US users write passwords down to help remember them.

When asked what is most annoying about passwords, the leading responses were keeping up with different password requirements across accounts (29%), meeting complex password requirements (18%), needing to change passwords regularly (15%), and getting locked out after too many incorrect attempts (12%).

Craig Lund, SecureAuth CEO said in a statement that from email to social media to the online bank account, just about every online identity requires a password, and in this high-tech age, passwords are a way of life. Many, however, are making some low-tech choices, as evidenced by the 35% of individuals who write down passwords.