Between 30 and 50% of all IT Help Desk calls are for password resets, and the average cost for each reset now stands at $10, according to Forrester Research (BusinessWeek, May 19, 2008).  That's why the growing sophistication and useability of a new generation of password harmonizing programs may make sense from a cost saving standpoint, and a frustration reducing one for your employees.

One interesting approach is to take employee building access cards, and use those to swipe for access on an organization's computer network.  IBM Tivoli has done just that at Indian's Marion General Hospital.

Automating password access will be a boon for American business.  Now I just need something to help me do away with the 4 pages of password access codes I currently have for all the web sites and applications I currently access!