If You Know All Your Passwords…

If you know all your passwords, your cybersecurity can be breached. Why? Anything that’s easy for you to remember follows a logical pattern that AI is getting better at picking up. A strong password has no logic. You must have a password manager, and you must let it generate a password for each online account.

You all know the drill by now. A strong password combines upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters in strings that generally are 12 to 16 characters long. We won’t say it’s impossible for a human being to create and remember 100 or more strong passwords. But it’s highly unlikely.

The best part of a password manager is that you only need to remember one strong master password. The downside is that if you lose or forget the password, you may not be able to access the app, or you’ll need to jump through a lot of hoops to gain access.

AI is making passwords weaker and weaker. Remember that at its core, AI is massive computing power. Anyone who tries to crack passwords can run an untold number of scenarios for as long as they need to crack a code or give up – momentarily. If you have a password that follows some kind of publicly available personal information and/or a pattern, the hacker’s computer will eventually pick it. The computer-generated password from a password manager doesn’t use any of that information, and it’s not readily machine readable.

In addition to giving you a strong password, a password manager does away with any need to reuse a password. There’s a tendency to reuse a password because you can remember it, especially if we fear it may be difficult to access the password manager. This can be true with a smartphone, where you can only view one screen at a time. However, you can copy a password from your password manager app and paste it into your smartphone’s browser.

As you all know, reusing passwords poses a significant risk if a password is cracked at one site. Again, using AI, the hacker can quickly apply the password to every website they know you access, and chances are good that they’ll get a hit and get in.

Just about any top-rated password manager works across all platforms and should give you the option to choose a family/friends subscription for personal use and a corporate subscription. It should be mandatory for everyone in your family and for all employees using corporate online accounts to have and – more important – use the password manager.

We can help you select a password manager that meets your needs and make sure that everyone in the program is properly set up. We can also make sure that everyone knows how to download their passwords and make a hard copy, which protects everyone if they lose or forget their password or if you want to change password managers. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us for an appointment.

Password123 and Other Common-Sense Anomalies

We continue to be amazed at the utter lack of common sense some people have when choosing strong passwords. Even if you satisfy all the algorithms for an allegedly strong password (upper- and lower-case letters, numerals and special characters), you may leave hints that make all too easy to crack it. Here are some factors to be aware of.

We believe the most important thing anyone has to understand is that nobody – absolutely nobody – is not on the internet. Obviously, you’re an online regular if you’re reading this, but even somebody who has never owned a computer or has paid for everything only in cash has an online profile. Birth certificates, census reports and immigration records from over 100 years ago are available online. Have you ever seen a security question (not one you’ve chosen and answered falsely) that asks about an old, old address of yours or a sibling?

Based on all the available information about you, it defies my logical definition of common sense to know why an attorney uses lawyer123 – or even lawyer123! – as a password. If you promote your profession or business on a website and somebody wants to crack your personal info, they’ll likely try using your profession – with 1234 and a special character.

Use common sense as well as technology’s tools to both make your life convenient and more secure. You can start with a password manager, such as Dashlane, which requires you to know only one really strong, difficult-to-crack password. You use that password to use the password manager, and the program generates random passwords that have no connection to you, your hometown or your first pet.

When you use a GPS system to go someplace, are you always aware of your surroundings in case something just doesn’t look or feel right? Common sense should tell you that you might not be in the right neighborhood or that the system’s algorithms are telling you to make a left turn where you can’t or to go the wrong way on a one-way street. Technology is an imperfect tool. It’s up to you to make sure you have the latest version of your technological tool, which we hope will have fewer imperfections.

Common sense will be society’s best defense in combating the way technology can spread disinformation and misinformation. This is not a political statement. Disinformation and misinformation have been used since before the printing press, but today’s technology makes it much easier to create and distribute words and images. There is no technological tool for critical thinking.

However, we can help you with the tools that can help you enhance your online security and your life. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us with any questions you have about better living through technology. It makes sense to be up to date.