August 30, 2012

Quoted In Dark Reading on Campus Cybersecurity

← Previous | Next →
estimated reading time: 1 minute and 5 seconds.

I was recently quoted in Kelly Jackson Higgins’s latest article for Dark Reading on Campus Cybersecurity. In part, I’m quoted as follows:

1. Set unique passwords for each account -- and don't give it to your boyfriend or girlfriend. That means not reusing the same password for multiple accounts. All it takes is one of those accounts to be compromised, and the attacker can reach the others as well. Create a minimum eight-character password with a mix of symbols, upper- and lowercase letters -- and no dictionary words within it.

"Pick a secure password, and don't tell it to anyone else," says Paul Kenyon, co-founder and COO of Avecto, a Windows privilege management provider.

Aaron Massey, a postdoctoral fellow in the School Of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, says that's his No. 1 tip. "Passwords are the No. 1 thing to talk to students coming in. They haven't established a strong routine for" creating strong and unique passwords, he says.

This is so critical, and it doesn’t have to be hard. Programs like 1Password or its many alternatives make securely maintaining unique passwords for numerous websites extremely easy. We may eventually develop a more user-friendly mechanism for common security tasks, but in the meantime, developing good habits for using strong passwords is critical.