ANCHOR CYBER FEED

Let us discuss the importance of using strong, complex passwords, and being diligent to use different passwords for everything. Most of us can agree that is good advice, but many of us don't follow it. The reason is simple: it is too hard to remember all those passwords! I understand completely; I personally have about 300 passwords right now! The old wisdom was to never write down your passwords and never record them ANYWHERE. However, the big threat to your data today is not someone who finds your password hidden under your keyboard, but someone on the other side of the world cracking or guessing your password. So to make complex and unique passwords possible, many security professionals recommend the use of a "password manager" software or service. Password managers are apps used to safely store ALL of your passwords and keep them safely encrypted in one place. Most are offered by providers who will store the data in the cloud so that you can sync it to all your ...

Passwords are perhaps the oldest and best-known security technologies in use today, as well as perhaps the most hated and despised. Security professionals dislike passwords because they often provide woefully inadequate security, and users hate them because they are hard to remember and manage. Security policy requirements often exacerbate this situation by imposing arcane requirements for password "complexity" and by requiring users to change passwords frequently (just when they are really, solidly stuck in our memory).The latest publication from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on the topic of authenticators (NIST Special Publication 800-63B) advances some exciting ideas that run counter to the typical ideas about how passwords should be chosen and managed: Systems should give users a minimum of ten attempts at entering their password.  Users should be encouraged to make their passwords long, and the length of passwords should not be limited t...