Passwords are not Forever

The human brain is considered to be the super computer of all super computers. Logical thoughts are triangulated, analyzed and resolved in the human brain within fractions of a second. With these results the brain controls our central nervous system which drives the functions and thoughts of our human body.

Why the deep thoughts? Well, here’s a question for you - Can the human brain be hacked?

The answer is very simply, no. The human brain lives within a disconnected world. Every human brain is disconnected with that of other brains. Telepathy and emotional bonding are all there but apart from that every human brain is an individual computer by itself and that makes intrusion very difficult.

Let’s use this information to relate to electronic computers. 70% of the computers in the world are connected either through the Internet or an Intranet. This very nature of being in a connected world makes the computer systems hack-able (unlike our brains).

To prevent unauthorized access, mutual authentication and authorization play key roles. Authentication helps identify the user who is trying to access a resource. Establishing identity by supplying a user name and password is still a valid method to authenticate systems.

Password security is a most important factor in authentication. You should consider securing your passwords similar to your credit card number. The strength of the password decides how strong your authentication mechanism is. A weak password can be guessed by executing a brute force attack using a subset of all possible passwords or either by launching a dictionary attack.

Passwords are the first line of defense for protecting assets; guessing them is a popular and often successful attack method. A poorly chosen password can result in the compromise of an entire corporate network.

Strong Password Guidelines:

• Should include at least eight characters.
• Should use a mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters.
• Should contain numeric characters.
• Should contain symbols such as *, ?, or $ or other some special characters.

Last but not the least, please consider changing your passwords every 30 days. As a good security practice, passwords should be changed as frequently as possible to minimize the attack probability. Of course Passwords are not forever!