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Open Sesame - Password Security
by: Terrence F. Doheny
"Open Sesame!" is probably the most famous password in literature. It gave Ali Baba access to vast treasure. In the realm of technology, computer passwords also give access to valuable treasures: precious business and personal data.
Information about your personal life, buying habits, credit quality and life style is valuable to those who can profit from it. For the Corporation, information has even greater worth. It is not the "Bricks and Mortar" but the intangibles such as intellectual property, client lists, market strategies, pricing and compensation that account for over half the value of the modern enterprise.
All of this personal and business data most likely resides on a database somewhere and is available with a password. In fact, passwords are the most common means of entry in any system. They are also acknowledged as the most vulnerable points for security. "Weak" or compromised passwords are the easiest way for hackers to gain entry into a system.
Simple or short passwords can be easily discovered through "brute force" or "dictionary" attacks which concentrate intense computer power to crack a password. A two letter password, for example, has only 676 combinations. A password with eight letters offers more safety with 208,000,000 combinations.
Ideally, a password should consist of 8 or more characters. They should also contain a mixture of upper and lower case letters, symbols and numbers. "A$d3B5i9X" would be an example. Microsoft security has encouraged the concept of the "Pass Phrase" as an alternative. A phrase such as,"TheLastGoodBookUBoughtCost$25!" has all of the needed elements and is also easy to remember.
The human factor or social engineering contributes to password compromises. It is estimated that employees share their password eight times a year. Passwords can also be cajoled from untrained or naïve workers. The standard rule is NEVER share a password.
Remember the cliché of the "Six Degrees of Separation." You cannot know who will eventually end up with your password and own it.
To cope with these issues, many leading edge firms are adopting a defense in depth strategy utilizing three elements to better safeguard their information
The three layers of authentication consist of:
What you know…
A strong password or pass phrase
What you have…
A Crypto-key, smart card or token
Who you are…
A biometric aspect such as fingerprint, hand, or retinal recognition
Usage of these three defensive measures will increase dramatically in the future as people seek to thwart ever increasing threats to their private and personal information. Many companies will be mandating them as a significant part of their security best-practices to safeguard an extremely valuable asset: their treasured data.
telecommunications
Here’s all you need to know about telecommunications
There is a great deal of information both in print and on the Internet about telecommunications and some is good while some is not very good. It’s difficult to tell just what information is valid and of real value. We have spent a great deal to time and research in locating the very best telecommunications web sites available.
As you spend a few minutes with us you will see that we have a very comprehensive index of telecommunications information and any question you have can be answered here. We know that your time is valuable and have made this telecommunications resource site easy to navigate.
If you have not already clicked the links in the middle of this page for more telecommunications information we invite you to do so now. You will find them most valuable and the telecommunications sources guarantee your satisfaction.
Just in the event that the sites in the middle of this page are not exactly what you want, then please scroll down the telecommunications links on the left side of the page and we are absolutely certain you will have every telecommunications question answered.
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