Archive for August 2010
Sharing Passwords
“Passwords are like toothbrushes: if you give yours to somebody, change it, don’t use it again.”
I got this from @cafedave… I thought it was a pretty brilliant analogy. You can find his website at http://cafedave.net/cafedave/.
In terms of sharing passwords, keep in mind that it’s like telling any other secret. It may not stay a secret for long.
Also it is important to think about the potential impact when you use the same password, or a password derivative for other sites. It might not be such a big deal to share your stumbleupon.com, airline miles, shared project site or other site passwords with a friend, employee or colleague. However, if you’re using a derivative of that password for banking, email, Facebook or other “private” site, it’s not necessarily going to stay private for long.
The majority of security breaches are caused not necessarily by malicious hackers, but by people trying to cut corners, being careless, or frankly trying to just get things done. In aggregate of recent risk analysis projects we’ve done, over 90% of the outside of policy exposure of confidential data came from broken business process or oversight.
This principle is equally true in both business and personal computing.
Small steps can definitively help you protect your personal data more efficiently. Some easy ones:
1) Don’t share your passwords
2) Don’t write them down
3) Make them tough to guess (don’t use your kids’ names, pet’s names, etc.)
4) Make them a mixture of letters, special characters and numbers
5) Change your passwords regularly. I put a reminder in my calendar to change them every 60-90 days depending upon the service.
Here’s an article I found from the Fermi Lab Security team on password good practices:
http://security.fnal.gov/UserGuide/password.htm
I’ll leave you with a couple of cool quotes I found on keeping secrets:
“If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.” – Kahlil Gibran
“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” – Ben Franklin
“Tell your friend a lie. If he keeps it secret, then tell him the truth.” – Proverb
