Your insider's guide to why passwords are here to stay, and how IT teams can stay in control of password management.

In the early 1960s, Fernando Corbató helped deploy the first known computer password. According to The Wall Street Journal, Fernando said he doesn't regret inventing the password, although it does have its flaws. These flaws prompted Bill Gates to famously say at a conference in 2004, "Traditional password-based security is headed for extinction, because it cannot 'meet the challenge' of keeping critical information secure." However, we're still using passwords—almost two decades later.

From their invention in the 1960s to now, passwords have come a long way. There has been a drastic yet consistent growth in both the number of passwords each person uses and the number of people who use them around the world. Besides enabling us to log into our computers, passwords today guard all of our digital identities. With so much dependency on passwords, they're far from being eradicated.