At last count, CyberGuru had over 300 (yes, three hundred!) individual user names and passwords for various internet services, including websites and other resources – not including those we manage for our clients. As the number of websites continue to grow, so do the amount of websites passwords required to access them!
According to NetCraft and Internet Live Stats (link opens in new window), in 1991 there was just one website in the internet. When we started CyberGuru in 1997 (before Google!), we were one over just over a million websites. Today, there’s over one billion websites. No wonder there’s more passwords!
Recently, a number of public announcements surrounding unfortunate incidents of hackers’ attempting (sometimes unsuccessful but other times successful!) to collect details including username and passwords, including eBay and Adobe in the past year have had the cause to remind us that no system is infallible!
In order to ensure you remain protected from this and to help protecting your passwords, CyberGuru would provide five tips to ensure you are protected against this:
- Ensure you use strong passwords for all of your websites, making sure you don’t use the same password.
- Change your passwords on a regular basis, especially those that are not hosted on secure platforms but contain private information.
- Consider ways of remembering your password. If needed, use a password manager to help you remember them unavailable
- Configure suitable alternative ways to reset your password (such as adding an alternative email address or your phone number).
- When answering secret questions, make them easy for you to remember but difficult for others to know!
To ensure you remain protected, we also recommend ensuring you are always on a secure network with internet security software installed. We will discuss this importance of this future blog articles.
If we can assist in any way with providing advice in proper password management, please contact us for our Support solution today.