A Russian group has hacked 1.2 billion usernames and passwords belonging to more than 500 million email addresses, according to Hold Security - a US firm specialising in discovering breaches.

Hold Security described the hack as the "largest data breach known to date".

It claimed the stolen information came from more than 420,000 websites, including "many leaders in virtually all industries across the world".

Usernames & passwords is broken, terminally. We need a better solution.

Secure storage of Usernames & passwords is broken, terminally. Companies need to put greater efforts into user security.

Any ideas as to what to replace them with?

SQRL
It is a sign on technology that uses cryptography and public private keys. You never give the site your key and you have a unique sign on for every site. Only if you're local PC gets hacked do you have a problem.

If one site gets hacked, only that site can be compromised and you just need to invalidate the current pairing and create a new key pairing for it.

It can also be anonymous, there is no username required.