Joseph Fisher

Imagine pulling in to your driveway one evening after a long day at work only to realize that your front door has been kicked in. After the police arrive, you discover that you have been burgled. That new shiny 50” plasma is gone. Your house is a mess. And there’s a tangled jungle of cables where your computer once sat.

It happens every day in America. All of us have door locks, and many of us even have sophisticated alarm systems to deter theft. But even the best door lock and alarm system can be thwarted, and chances are you’re not employing bank vault level security at your front porch. Most of us try to offset the risk of theft by purchasing insurance, renting safety deposit boxes, or even deploying our very own safe. But what steps do we take to protect our computer? (continue reading…)

I have over 100 passwords that I have to keep track of between work and everything else. If you’re as forgetful as I am, this can be a daunting list! After trying many different password management strategies, I’ve finally landed on one that’s easy for me to work with, and allows for a strong unique password for each web site I visit. Best of all, I only have to remember one single password.

Before we get into the details of password management best practices, I’d like to take a moment to remind you as to why it’s important to have unique and strong passwords. Recently Georgia Tech researchers published a study that shows that with modern computing power, it’s possible to crack 8-character passwords in under two hours. But by adding 4 extra character, the length of time increases to over 17,000 years. That’s because each additional character increases the possibilities (and subsequently the number of passwords to try) by approximately 95 times.

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