Use a strong password or phrases for access to your data by any device whether in your home or office. Employing the strongest reasonable passwords on your devices will ensure that your data remain secure and uncompromised. When logging into different websites, it is highly recommended to use a different password or phrase for each site. Many people like to use the same or one other password for several websites so that they can make it easier to remember those passwords. By doing so, if the passwords get accessed by an unwelcomed user, your secure data will be compromised.
Another way of
securing passwords is a completely random combination of characters.
One may also have lengthy passwords using numbers, symbols, and
alphabetic characters of both upper and lower case letters. If
you fear the challenge of remembering the different passwords,
another option is to store the passwords or phrases in a safe place
such as a special notebook and securing it in a drawer at home.
Online communication greatly depends on one’s ability to keep the words they write as their own. Hacking attempts and leaked databases indicate that someone else might be able to take over your account. Once accomplished, the intruder could write something that is contradictory to everything you have built online. Keeping your password safe and unique is a difficult task with the many threats that are presented in today’s digital age. Additionally, recording all the websites someone uses can make using a unique password a full-time job in itself. Others have seen this issue and responded by creating an open sourced password manager called KeePass.
As suggested above, it is ideal for passwords to be unique and different for all websites. The following scenario supports this: say a hacker gains access to a secure site and downloads the user database that houses all of the usernames and passwords for the site. Clearly, this site is now compromised and the data is free for the hacker to use. Something that many hackers might try is to use the username and password combinations on other sites to gain access to them as well. If one of those username/password combinations was yours, and you used the same combination repeatedly, this single point of intrusion has now given a hacker full access to your digital life. In addition to using different passwords on all your regularly visited sites, you should use unique and long passwords. An example of a highly secure password follows:
“the quick brown fox jumps over the fence”.
One would think this phrase, in its entirety as a password, is strong. According to www.passwordmeter.com it ranks at a 67%. But, keeping the same phrase but changing a few letters will help make the password near impossible to crack:
“Th3 qu1ck 8r0wn foX jumps 0v3r th3 f3nc3!”.
This password ranks very strong and scores 100%.
KeePass is a piece
of software that houses all of your login and password info into an
encrypted database for safe keeping. Now let’s talk about how
to store all the unique passwords for each site that you have.
KeePass was developed to help users close the gap between using
passwords that are just long enough, to using maximum character
unique passwords that would take super computers hundreds of
thousands of years to crack. KeePass will allow users to auto
generate passwords for whatever account they create a password for.
This helps to keep passwords unique for each individual site. This
also helps to keep the user from having to rest every password on
every site, should they have the same password on multiple sites.
KeePass uses an encrypted database to store all of your passwords and
requires a user to have a very long and unique password to unlock the
encrypted database. This program was first developed with intended
password storage for the personal computer, but it has been expanded
to adapt to this continually evolving digital age. The KeePass
program can now be used on both iOS and Android devices with a
rumored Windows Phone app coming soon, allowing users to keep their
passwords unique and safe for each app that requires one. KeePass is
a very popular option in password management but there are many
others out there so try one that fits you requirements. 
Installation of KeePass is very simple. Once downloaded from their website, run the installation package selecting the defaults. Now that the program is installed, run it for the first time. It will ask you to create a password key for unlocking the database file for KeePass. This password you want to be super strong as it will protect all other passwords. Once this is set up, you can now add websites to KeePass. Add the website URL and then the username. The next step you can have KeePass auto-generate the password and then you just need to update the websites stored info or you can try in your current password. I found the more secure option was to auto-generate the password. Click save and the site is now set. Now when you visit the site you can fire up KeePass right click on the website save password to clipboard and paste into the password field.
With your logins for all your websites unique and different, you are now safe from any leak or attack on online companies you deal with. Just remember that if a site you use gets compromised, your password will need to be reset and updated in your password manager. I have personally used KeePass for the past year or more and find that the changes and enhancement made best suit my needs for password management. I use both the desktop and mobile apps to keep my passwords safe and secure no matter where I’m at.
The federal, state, and local government implemented policies and initiatives to improve cyber security. Individuals have become more dependent on technological information and devices. Individuals have moved on to acquiring organizational information on personal devices. According to Asllani, et. al (2013), “The doctrine of cyber security as a public good necessitates the financing of cyber security through taxes and justifies the role of government in its attempt to enhance cyber security. The doctrine demands that federal, state, and local governments provide a comprehensive legal, social, ethical, regulatory, and liability framework to protect individuals and organizations from the threat of cybercrime or cyber terrorism” (p. 10). Other means of providing enhancements to cyber security through the government is providing education, improve the criminal justice system to fight cyber security, fight and prosecute in cyber terrorism, protect digital rights, and regulate compliance in cyber security.
6 comments:
Doesn’t it seem as though, among other things; our lives are based on passwords? You have given invaluable information regarding keePass and different ways to scramble and make a password more secure and unhackable. What I would love to know is how to recall of these different passwords at any given time. It is not only the passwords that one uses for his or her online world it is those passwords that are also used in the physical world. Credit cards, debit cards, gas cards, store cards, loyalty cards…etc., there are times when I am at the store and trying to enter a PIN on a card as a password and vice versa. It is a wonderful and necessary to have PINs and passwords, however we need to come-up with a secure way to recall all of these codes at a moments notice and on the spot.
I agree keePass is a good resource for managing passwords. I was unaware that mobile apps are now available. Those apps make using keePass much more feasible when you consider the number of different access points a user may use in a given day.
That's so clutch. Thanks for the information, I am one of those who uses the same pass fore everything! Ok, not everything, but most. Thank you for the advise!
I find it very tough to switch up passwords. When I have different passwords I always forget them and I hate dealing with trying to reset them. I have the same password for everything, makes my life a lot easier.
Sammy Farag
It is unfortunate that we now live in a world where we have to continually operate in a manner that requires us to be in a protective mode. I hear often that is too hard to manage the many passwords we are required to maintain and that simplicity and convenience is more important. I too do not like that I have to continually update passwords and in some cases, must admit that I use some of the same passwords for certain services. However, the reality of the world we live in is one that has unethical people looking to steal information for their own benefit and could be devastating and ruin the lives of others. I have used Keepass and have found it to be a useful app but I have also lost information due to mobile device upgrades that caused the app to fail. It is very frustrating but I have come to terms with that fact that if I want my information to be safe, then it is up to me to do the things necessary to protect what is important to me. I has now just become standard practice (like it or not!)
It is indeed crucial to have a high level of security in our passwords to protect ourselves. To me, it is just not realistic, even using an app or other assistance, to use different, strong passwords, 100% of the time, on every different instance. As others commented before, technology needs to elevate and come up with a different solution for individual protection. It needs to be unique in something that no one else has, such as a fingerprint or retina scan. It could perhaps start to be built in to all personal devices and available now as an external accessory. We are in a dynamic technology age where there is so much information now that we use and save that the process to secure it needs to evolve along with it.
Post a Comment