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It's difficult enough trying to remember your mobile phone number and credit-card pin, never mind all the "what's your mother's maiden-name" security questions from whichever company you are currently embroiled-with battling administrative incompetence (sorry, 'computer error') but just when you think you're on top of everything, the workplace reminds you just how far downstream in the daily effluent you really are...
For the past 8 years, I have worked at the same desk, doing the same job, during which period I have worked for 5 different companies due to re-branding, friendly mergers, hostile take-overs, out-sourcing and in-sourcing back again. During this time, the complexity of the computer systems I use, support, or am responsible-for has ballooned beyond all recognition. Gone are the days when I had one userid and one password. Now I have one userid and password for our original systems, a different userid for the parent company's systems, and yet another for the systems of merged-in companies. I have a different userid to log on to my lap-top, a different userid for our problem management system, a different userid for our intranet site, a different userid for external internet access, a different userid for our time-recording system, Etc, Etc. Getting the picture yet? In total, just to access the systems I need to do my job, I have 15 (fifteen) different userid/password combinations.
Ok, let's make things easy on myself and make the passwords the same! Nope, sorry can't do that. One userid requires a minimum of 6 characters, another a minimum of 8, others a maximum 8. Some require a mixture of upper and lower case, others require a mixture of alphabetic and numeric characters. Some can't begin with a number, others can't end with a number. Some must begin with a capital letter, others may not include capital letters. If by some herculean mental effort or feat of genius you actually manage to concoct a password that fits all the criteria, you then fall foul of the fact that each password requires renewing at regular intervals. Helpfully all the intervals are different - once a month, once every three months, once a year. And just to make things really fun, you then run the gauntlet of restrictions such as "password is the same as one of your last 12 passwords" or "password too similar to previous password." And of course the absolute, paramount consideration at all times is that you must not write any of this down in case anyone else sees this critical, personal information.
ARE YOU OUT OF YOU TINY MIND? You're asking me to remember all of this, in addition to all the personal details I have to remember, in addition to all the daily "just-getting-by-in-life" stuff that happens - AND be on top of my game to support and administer extremely complex technical systems on a daily basis???!?!?!?!?!?
ARGH-OMETER RATING:
