Microsoft’s research team studied this extensively. They looked at what actually happens when you enforce complexity requirements. Users don’t create randomly generated passwords. They follow predictable patterns. Capital letter at the start. Numbers at the end. Exclamation point at the very end. The word “Password” appears in about eight percent of “complex” passwords. When you force rotation, users increment numbers. Summer2024 becomes Fall2024. Or they add exclamation points. Or they change a single character and call it done. The false sense of security is dangerous. IT departments see compliance numbers go up. Everyone is following the password policy. The auditors are happy. Meanwhile, actual security hasn’t improved at all.
All this is correct. But I’ll also add the following:
Most people probably DGAF if their password for work is compromised. They have no skin in the game for whatever their data entry or email is for BigCorp, they’re treated like “monkey push button, monkey get banana,” forced to jump through password hoops and they’re sick of doing it every few weeks or months. So they use the simplest they can get away with and the easiest to remember so they don’t have to call some corpo IT help desk that will roll their eyes at yet another password reset.
This is where “notebook full of passwords” works better, those accounts are technically “shared corporate property”. Protect it like you would any other equipment, with a physical lock.
Oh noes! Not my work microsoft account! Hack anything but that!