October is almost over so here are some last minute tips on how to beef up your Cyber Security Awareness
Use Strong Passwords
Examples of weak passwords are:
- Default passwords like admin, password, root
- ANY word in a dictionary
- Obfuscated words like: Te$t, d00rno8, B1ack
- Repeated words: funfun, salesale
- Keyboard Sequences such as: asdfg, qwerty, 12345
- Number Sequences like: 12345, 0987654321
- Your user name or email address
- Personal Identifiers like: your phone number, current or previous address, birthdays, kids or pets names
Remembering complex passwords can be difficult. Try a mnemonic style password, this could be accomplished by using the first letter of each word in a phrase for example:
“The orange fox jumped over the cow and ran back to her den in the deep dark forest.”
This phrase would then become the password:
tofjotcarbthditddf
The key here is to achieve high entropy (randomness/disorder) and if you want to be extra secure use an uppercase letter and surround your password with symbols:
_Tofjotcarbthditddf_
The first password would achieve a quality of 60 bits, pretty good, but by adding an uppercase letter and surrounding the password with underscores you would achieve a quality of almost 100 bits–Much harder to crack.
For those who have trouble remembering all your passwords check out http://keepass.info/ a free password manager that uses strong encryption, and has a smartphone app!
