Forget Cyber Monday - Lets Look At Cyberwatch Daily!!!

Our final project in the Computer Security class is to team up with a “virtual” classmate and basically create a Public Service Announcement (PSA) about computer security.  It seems easy enough.  Do the research and compile a PSA.  The fun part will be to make it interesting and memorable.  Most PSA’s are boring.  When I hear them they don’t make me want to change anything I do and in about a minute after hear them I forget them.  Defeats the purpose but that is how I react to them personally.  So the challenge to me is, not to just make one with facts but to do it in a way that the listener/viewer will remember what they heard/saw and eventually change their ways or at least remember to do a little research later on the subject. 

Cyberwatch, who sponsor’s the contest is a pretty neat organization.  They are dedicated to protecting all of us common folks online.  With very little protection from the long arm of the law we have to rely on organizations like Cyberwatch to Cyberwatch out backs.  Looking at their site they do a lot.  They do so much they may have already protected all of us in some capacity but we would never have known it.  I’m sure that’s the way they like it.  To protect the internet.

My partner and I chose passwords for our topic.  With so many portals that need a username and password it is nearly impossible to keep track.  So what do most of us do?  We try to use the same one.  I personally have Excel file that I keep all of mine written down on.  I have 57 password links.  For more than half I use the same one.  Just because it’s easy.  Doing the research I first found that using a strong password is important.  Look at this site, http://www.theinternetprivacyguide.com/the-basics-of-creating-strong-internet-passwords.  They tell you that if you get a lot of spam and junk mail daily you may have a weak password.  That makes sense.  If you, for example, use password as your password the people who send junk mail can easily figure out your password.   Look at the below video.  This person is showing us how a simple program can be download and installed to figure out a password.  The first time he runs it, it picks his password right away, within seconds.  Wow.  

 

I also found that there are numerous techniques that can be used to create very strong and easy to remember passwords.  Check out this site from Microsoft.  http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/passwords-create.aspx.  They’re suggestion is to take a sentence and pick the first letters from each word as a basis, then change it until you have a strong password.  Now you can just add a little to your password to customize it for each site so you can remember.  All you really need to remember is your base password really.  It’s better than making 57 unique passwords in my case. 

This video shows another persons take on it.  It’s really smart but me personally, I’d have to get used to it.  I’ll let you watch the video but it is something that I would have never thought of. 

Our class is all about keeping yourself safe when using technology and to avoid disaster.  We learned how the predators come after us and how to protect ourselves.  When we talk about computers, laptops, handhelds and phones, your first line of defense is your password.  That is why this subject is so important.

What I hope to take out of this project is a little more knowledge about passwords and to become a subject matter expert about it so I can help my friends, co-workers, and others a little smarter about what to do when they click on the link to “Create a New Account”.