Thurs May 4, 2017 is
World Password Day! I know that's coming up fast, but don't worry, you still
have time to plan your celebration. No, that's not the day when you share your password with the world. Nor is it about changing your bank password from 123456 to 1234567.
I've written about this in the
past. World Password Day is a day to learn and it's yet another opportunity to take a look at what is protecting your personal information, your financial information, your medical information as well as your internet presence and reputation. Most passwords provide a thin veil of protection
On World Password Day, we should at the 4 main problems we can very easily fix:
- People choose weak or easily guessable passwords - the simple fix is to choose better passwords! As I've said many times in the past, when it comes to passwords, size matters! Make 'em long. But even if you choose a good password...
- Passwords get reused among sites - this is a major problem because the attackers will try stolen passwords at other sites. And it works. So choose a unique password for every site on which you have an account. But...
- We can't remember all our passwords - so, as we've discussed in the past, use a password vault. The vault is a program that will help you choose great passwords, recall those passwords and protect them. But sometimes that's not enough because...
- Even well-chosen passwords can be guessed or hacked - so for extra protection use two-factor authentication (also called multi-factor authentication). Typically this means using an app on your smartphone as part of the login process. That means, to break into your account, an attacker would need both your (long, strong) password AND your smartphone. That's hard for the attacker to do. And using multi-factor is easy! Setting up 2-factor authentication is easier than ever before and is in use on many mainstream sites including Google, Facebook and Twitter. Here's some info on sites offering 2-factor authentication.
And if those all aren't enough reasons to move to 2-factor authentication, now... that pinnacle of journalism... Teen Vogue, has put out a really good article on the subject! You can
read it here.
In addition to really good coverage of 2-factor methods and websites, the article also goes into more advanced topics like the use of a physical fob called a
Yubikey.
What is really significant is that this article is directed at a population who both grew up with technology and is used to sharing everything. The key message is that there are good reasons for protecting your information and reputation, even if you don't yet have financial assets or a job.
So, are you ready to take the World Password Day challenge? Start slowly. Get a password vault and start with your most important sites: banks, insurance, investment and social media. Change the passwords to unique long strong ones.
It's US Cyber Security Month and, like clockwork, we have Yahoo! in the news again telling us that the worst case from the past just keeps getting worster (I can make up words, can't I??? :-). They are now counting their breached accounts at over 3 billion! How many people are there in the world these days?... Last year at this time, they announced the breach of 500 million Yahoo! account passwords and other info (while announced in 2016, the breach actually took place in 2014, and is not the same as the password breach they had in 2012! - yes, I know... it's hard to keep up!). In honor of both Cyber Security Month and Yahoo!, I'm re-running a post I wrote in... wait for it... 2012! Not only is everything I wrote in that post 100% relevant today, but I even commented on that 2012 Yahoo! breach. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Happy Cyber Security Month!
They're dead. They're here to stay.
