Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer incurs wrath of white hats for iPhone 5S passcode dismissal

Yahoo chief executive and generally smart person Marissa Mayer has made a rare slip-up, publicly admitting she doesn't have a passcode on her smartphone due to being too busy.
Mayer made the revelation during an interview at the TechCrunch Dispute conference, gleefully admitting her security no-no when asked for her thoughts on the new Apple iPhone 5S fingerprint scanner.
"It's funny because you mocked me once at TechCrunch, maybe it was at LeWeb, because Mike was making fun of me because I don't have a passcode on my phone," she said.
"And Mike was like ‘Are you crazy?', and I was like 'Look, I just can't do this passcode thing, like 15 times a day,' and then when I saw the fingerprint thing I thought now I don't have to. I was excited about that and think building some of these smart sensors into the phone is really exciting."
Following the admission the security community is up in arms, with many bemoaning the ex-Google vice president's apparent ignorance about even the most basic smartphone security. Independent security expert Graham Cluley went so far as to call the Yahoo chief a "twerp".
"Colour me unimpressed. There's really not any excuse for having even the weakest four-digit passcode on your iPhone (longer, more complex passwords are better and surprisingly easy to remember), and yet lots of people have none in place," he wrote.
"What's alarming is that Mayer is the CEO of a major internet company, who have a responsibility for protecting the privacy of hundreds of millions of net users. What kind of example is she setting by not having any form of login security on her smartphone? What a twerp."
However, the accusation may be slightly over the top. As Tim Cook noted during the iPhone launch event on Tuesday, many iPhone users follow Mayer's example in not bothering to turn on the passcode, hence Apple adding the fingerprint scanner.

F-Secure's security advisor Sean Sullivan also took a more lenient approach to Mayer's admission. "It seems to me that the 'blame the user' tech crowd is a bit too eager to pile on the abuse for her habits. Perhaps they just don’t want to admit their advice is a failure, which doesn’t really meet everybody’s real-world needs," he said.
"Context matters. Regular people are careless with their phones, so regular people should really consider using a password. Internet company CEOs who live in the penthouse of the Four Seasons aren’t regular folks, so the same advice just doesn’t apply."
We think if polled, most chief executives around the world would give the exact same – albeit slightly less gleeful – answer. As such, while it's fair to bemoan Mayer's security mishap, we should avoid reverting to finger pointing and instead take it as a sign we need to do more to educate people about the importance of robust cyber security, as the UK government is doing with its ongoing Cyber Strategy. To watch the video click:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g1DpjA5jbg&feature=player_embedded