Creating good passwords and using encryption — Part 1
By: Eric Finney the System Dude 07/01/2006
How many of you leave the house doors unlocked while at the grocery store, better yet how many of you put a check in the mail without sealing the envelope? If you answered yes to either of these questions that tells me both your laptop and desktop computers are at risk.
I’m sure most of you have heard the news concerning a government laptop being stolen which contained sensitive information of military veterans (http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/23/vets.data/) and also the latest coming out of St. Paul concerning auditor notebooks being stolen which contained the private information of employees for several local city governments (http://www.startribune. com/462/story/490333.html). Let me tell you this type of theft could happen to anyone of us at anytime.
The question we must ask ourselves is if we do keep sensitive and private data on our PC, how do we go about protecting it in case of a theft? The answer to that is good/strong passwords and encryption. Believe it or not we use some sort of encryption in our everyday lives. If you lock your house doors and seal an envelope, you have encrypted them to a certain extent. One thing to remember is, no matter how good a password or how strong encryption is, it can eventually be broken.
Passwords are the keys you use to access all information on your PC, online banking accounts and more. If a criminal were to steal your password they could cause serious damage to your financial future. Fortunately, it is quite easy to create a strong password and keep it safe.
The first step in creating a good password is to make it lengthy. Your password should be at least 8 characters in length and 15 characters or longer is ideal. A mixture of letters and numbers are always best. The password is usually harder to guess when it contains a great variety of characters. A general rule is that a password which contains fewer types of characters should be longer. Example: an 18 character password which has random letters and numbers is thousands of times stronger than an 8 character password which is made up of characters from the entire keyboard. The ideal password has both length and many types of characters.
The next step is to use words or phrases that you can remember, however they must not be too easy for a criminal to guess. You’ve probably heard this before, stay away from the dog’s name, children’s names, spouse’s names and street names. These choices are easily crackable.
Once you think that you’ve created a strong password feel free to test its strength by going to (http://www.securitystats. com/tools/password.php). This online utility will score your password from weak to strong.
Tip of the month: When using a DOS window, make it fill the full screen by pressing Alt + Enter keys.
If you have general questions for the System Dude, send them to eric@talktechno.net.