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[description], Story, any other text you want to use. 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…
What you have…
Who you are…
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.
xm radio
While the threat from hackers is low for individuals, a more serious threat to personal privacy comes from unscrupulous xm radio companies that operate websites for quick quids. Many xm radio sites require you to register before you can use its services. Often you must provide personal information, such as your name, street address, and e-mail address. Then as you browse the site, data is collected as to which pages you visited, how long you remained on each page, the links you clicked, what terms you searched, and so on. After a number of visits to the site, a personal profile emerges. The question is, what do xm radio site operators do with this information? Most claim that they use it to personalize your experience on the site. For instance, if a xm radio site learns that you are interested in xm radio, the next time you visit the site, you might be presented with an article or advertisements for that and related products. But some xm radio websites sell this information to marketers, which means that you may find yourself receiving unwanted catalogs from garden suppliers. Our preferred retailer does not do this. Real Time Media On The Net Index
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