Password Security Awareness

 

Password security Awareness

Its about a year and thought it's a good time to include another article of mine about the importance of password security awareness:

This new era everything is being digital. From searching anything on the PC and on the mobile devices a to using the credit card (the magnetic stripes) requires some sort of password security. All the above devices rely heavily on the digital devices that how they operate, and rely heavily on the digital network. These digital devices and digital network are relying on the security keys. Through security keys we are accessing the digital network with the digital devices. So, keeping our information secure in this digital world as of today is becoming more important than ever before. Who are the responsible people in order to keep the data secure? The answer is we all are, we all need to be educated, receive more awareness from our surroundings in the digital world, be aware of any newsfeeds related to security or hacks, and be on the lookout and constantly aware when using our credit cards, mobile devices, PC's ETC. The first line of defense in order to block from hacking our digital devices, is us. Under many circumstances, we need to be aware and be informative and be trained to keep up to date with the data, as keeping it secure. 

Passwords nowadays are becoming more evolved as before in the sense of remembering the passwords. Before passwords were simple to remember, nowadays passwords have become more difficult, and to be sure that not using the same passwords in all devices adds another milestone and including all domains as well they all have to be unique, different and should include specific characters along with Alpha and numeric characters that how many bytes they contain. Not to mention, the password strength that using week passwords could become a downfall for us. A strong password will always be difficult to crack as compared to a simple and easy password. Most common passwords many people are using as sequential count as 123456..., or just include password as password, or hobbies people like such as football, soccer, baseball, or some people like to create mythological creature names ETC. or not using the same password almost everywhere which means that they have given their access to everything to the hackers.

There could be endless different reasons why someone or hacker would try to access one's information. Few of them that:

Some people are phishing and randomly targeting a person (on a personal or professional level) 

Suppose if group of people are targeting a person due to not liking the person, due to personal, political, to access intellectual property ETC or just harassing a person, and possibly could monitor the person's ware bouts (outside and home) tap calls, tracking commute through GPS. So more than likely they could have access to many digital devices. Also on professional level, one person could be the CEO of a company and have Assistance. Hacker or envy group could use to network access to tons of information about a company through the assistant or assistant may have been the target of the information and also to reach millions of dollars.

or

A person may have access to digital device as PC, mobile phone (personal and or professional level) ETC 

Suppose if an auto call center employee's had his/her password stolen on purposely, who is dealing with many external entities, then the hacker can easily get access to thousands of other credit status access, auto finance information or personal information of customers including demographic. 

or

Planning a virus

Hackers could be sending spoof or phishing emails to attack on personal and professional levels or by planting a virus on your computer and allowing it to spread. Virus could access to a person and their family and professionally to their colleagues which could put a person's private and processional life at risk. We should be watchful of all phishing attacks or even calls as from IRS, FBI, Police - Law enforcement  ETC.

Another important info to noted that all passwords should be maintained meaning periodically updated. 

To conclude, it is important to be aware of password security. Always wise to keep things secure and not public. And to always logout of the devices that are not in our vicinity. I know that passwords are not easy to remember when it comes down to remembering each unique password for each unique domain. But there are better ways to remember instead of saving it in so much of a secure place. Also we need to be educated that how to remember and recall passwords. Even though there are many new secure apps and device out there currently used as a most secured known as Two factor Authentication keys. But someday those devices may become vulnerable and then we have to purchase newer devices or apps. The best solution is to remember it in a way to hard code it that it can never be forgotten. Also one thing to note that the longer the passwords are the better they would be to crack. If a person has difficulty to remember passwords then they should get a secure app or use any secure tool that has layers of encryption and also we should search for better apps providing those kind of services and should try to avoid a free app services. They may not have all features to keep password protected.