The Time to Do the Right Thing

Be honest. How many times do you use a password for multiple websites because you need to remember it? You know that a string of 16 to 20 random characters upsets any pattern a hacker might use to steal a password for one site and maybe get into multiple places.

One of our clients recently told us how they saw the light, and it was a really gratifying conversation for me. He said: “I listened to what you said about passwords, and I did everything. Life is so much simpler now.”

It shocked me because that’s not usually what we hear. I wish more of our clients would get on the bandwagon when it comes to passwords and password managers. I can’t emphasize enough how password managers enable you to have unique, complex passwords for every website you need to access and how easy they are to use. You don’t always get to “stronger” and “simpler” as adjectives for a single concept.

What’s the “stronger” part of password managers? They generate those ideal passwords of 16 to 20 random characters that include upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters. If everyone in your password chain – the people, companies and institutions you deal with – has a strong, generated password, that should make everyone as hack-proof as you can get. The problem is that the weakest link in the chain is the easy-to-crack password.

The” simpler” part is that you only need to remember one master password. (The hard part is making sure you have access to it in case you do forget it.) Before getting all his passwords into a password manager, our client said he would change a password by adding a number or a character because it was easier to remember. But it wasn’t simple. He would still need to remember what number or character he added to the old one, and maybe he had 50 passwords to remember – or carry around in a list.

A good password manager that can work across multiple devices can cost $50 to $100 a year. We believe that’s relatively cheap for the security you gain and the time you save from trying and retrying passwords or resetting them. The password manager becomes stronger and simpler when you combine it with facial recognition on a mobile phone.

Using a password manager and other forms of authentication will take some getting used to. But it’s worth it to take the time to do the right thing to protect your online security and your sanity.

Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us if you need help in choosing a password manager and setting up the basics. We can also help you with other ways to authenticate your online access. See our article Pass the Key, Please.

 

Pass the Key, Please

If you’re sick and tired of managing passwords (see our article Take the Time to Do the Right Thing), take a new look at using passkeys and forget about the hassle. A passkey is a pair of cryptography keys generated by your device. A public key and a private key combine to create a passkey that unlocks your account. They may take some getting used to, but the security boost will be well worth the effort.

Microsoft is encouraging everyone to use a passkey when they sign up for a new account, and they’re moving away from the default of passwords for all new accounts allowing you to ditch them altogether. Just as a related side note, when you create a Microsoft account, do not create a local passkey. It will only work on the device you used to create the account, and that will defeat the purpose of being able to sign in from anywhere on any device.

A passkey is a pair of cryptography keys generated by your device. A public key and a private key combine to create a passkey that unlocks your account. If you remember going to your safe deposit box at the bank, you had one key in your possession, and you got a key from the bank for your visit. This is an electronic variation of the theme.

Microsoft introduced passkey support across most of its consumer apps a year ago, eliminating the need for two-factor authentication (2FA) or passwords. Now, it’s encouraging all new signs up to use passkeys as it removes passwords as the default. Websites are increasingly allowing you to passkeys for secure access.

Passkeys and password managers are able to work together for the most part. Usually, the device or software generating the passkeys uses a biometric authentication tool, such as FaceID or TouchID, to authenticate your identity. If your password manager is the passkey source, you can log in with your master password. Passkeys are unique to each app or website and stored in a password manager’s vault or your device’s keychain. Passkeys can also sync across devices, making them a convenient choice.

There are some holes in the passkey strategy that you should be aware of. The websites themselves can be the source of weakness in the security chain. Security experts say criminals can easily get around a passkey by stealing users’ validated browser cookies using malware.

While that puts an onus on the websites  to tighten up their operations, you can help protect yourself better. For example, don’t just accept the website’s data privacy settings when a box pops up on a website. Instead, navigate to the “Cookies” or “User Data” sections and choose the shortest available session duration. That way your cookies will expire automatically or whenever you close your browser window. You can also turn off various marketing and targeting cookies.

Again, passkeys take time to set up, and there’s a learning curve to using them effectively. We believe it’s well worth your time to start using them. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to learn more about passkeys – and how they work with password managers. We can help you select and configure passkeys and password managers together and move you up to the next level of online security.

Read Your Email Before You Open It

Phishers, shmishers and other bad actors on the internet are getting really good at disguising themselves. They’re learning English better, designing their graphics better and even spelling better.

All of this means is that you need to start reading your emails more closely before you ever open them. Whether you’re using Microsoft Outlook or Gmail, the attack strategy is the same. We’ve warned for years and years that scammers rely on you being distracted or trying to do too much in too little time.

But now, the hackers are getting better at combining better language and graphics with holes or workarounds they find in website security systems. It’s not a new problem, but it’s becoming more widespread. ZDNet has an extensive article on how it affects Google and Gmail, but the principles are similar for Microsoft and Outlook. You need to take a close look at every email address for incoming email and every address or website link before you click on anything.

In the article, there was an example of how an email looked like a normal Gmail message, and it had links to what realistically looked like a legitimate Google support site. But a closer look revealed that it went to a Google Sites website. Google Sites is a free, web-based platform from Google for creating websites. It’s particularly useful for internal team sites, project hubs, or public-facing websites, and hackers have uses for it, too. A link to a Google Sites website came from no-reply@google.com, which is a legitimate but spoofable email address. The hackers or creators of that site were able get through some authentication workarounds to bypass safety measures used to stop this sort of attack.

You can see where this is going. One tech industry solution would be to require stronger forms of authentication or more authenticators. But as we’ve said over and over again, you need to take matters into your own hands.

In your email client, you can hover over the address that the email comes from and see who it’s really from. Even if you have opened a particular email, you can slowly and carefully read any email address or website link to see if it raises any suspicions. One thing that should raise a yellow or red flag is an urgent call to action, such as uploading a file or clicking a link to investigate a problem. A Google Sites website will have Google in its URL, and that could be a trap. Not to pick on Google, but any fake site can use a legitimate domain variation to snag you.

Here’s one checklist to help you spot a fraudulent email or website:

  1. Beware of any email that urges immediate action and tells you might face negative consequences.
  2. Check the “from” and ” to” email addresses. If the ” from” domain isn’t the actual company or the “to” recipient is not you, it’s likely a scam.
  3. Avoid clicking on links in the email and look at the context. Would Google send you a legal complaint and direct you to the Google Sites domain? We don’t think so!
  4. Run an online search for the content of the email to see if others have reported it as a scam or received a similar email.

If you think you may have clicked on a malicious website or may have downloaded some malicious software, call us immediately at 973-433-6676. We have tools to see what is on your computer and to remove the malware from your system.