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Password Protection – What is it and Why is it Important

May 9, 2012

Although many of us would like it if the world was safe and full of friendly honest people,  as e-mail, on-line shopping, and more financial transactions are being completed by automated billing and email.  This new way of life has become a way of life for criminals too.  The number of cyberspace crooks and criminal activity has increased. That’s why it’s important to protect your password.

Think of the information about you someone can get with your password.  If an individual is able to read your messages:  here are some of the things they might find 1) tax information, 2) your contact information, 3) contact information for all your personal and business emails, 3) confirmation and account information for all bills paid online, 4) personal information and demographic information from your emails, 5) information about your children if discussed in emails to their schools, other loved ones, or doctors.  Another aspect of this type of criminal activity is scamming the individual’s contacts for money or buying products. 

Truth is, most people do such a bad job of creating a password, guessing is easy.  Topping the list of bad passwords are: the name of a spouse, your house number, a child’s name, the digits of your birthday or the name of a pet. I once knew a fellow who used his own name for a password, Jason Mayer, CEO of www.mtitechs.com  said.   This is one of the worst password security breaches an individual can make.

Password Strength

Password strength is a gauge of the ability of the password to word off others from a brute-force attack against your email and computer.  Typically a passwords’ strength can determine how many attempts an invader has to make to have absolute access to the unique password the individual selected.  This is based on an average number of guesses.  What elements are important to a secure password?  The strength of a password is a comprised of complexity, length, and unpredictability.

Why is this important?

The utilization of a strong password decreased the danger of a security breach.  Although the password is important, it does not substitute the importance of other security measures and controls.  The value of a strong password is solidly established in the authentication system software.  Typically, the authentication system software will analyze how often password guesses can be accessed and tried by an invader.  In addition, authentication system software can determine how safe passwords information is transmitted and stored.  Other dangers to computer hackers unrelated to password breaching are dumpster diving, keystroke logging, phishing, side-channel attacks, social engineering, and software vulnerabilities.

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