Authentication - Are We Doing Well Enough? [Guest Editors' Introduction]

Passwords have been used for authentication and authorization purposes since at least the time of Ali Baba. Generals used them to identify messengers, and sentries used them to restrict access to certain areas. Sometimes they were personal; other times they were shared by a group. Passwords are intuitive and were the obvious choice for access control at the dawn of the computer era. The emergence of the Internet changed our authentication needs as well as the risks-but passwords remained.