People have come to dislike better cybersecurity practices. Primarily because cybersecurity is less convenient. However, when one translate the perceived inconvenience to the real-world, it seems less of a hassle. You probably lock your house and your car. You probably get upset when your private data is compromised. You already have the inclination to give yourself better cyberecurity.
Ways to enhance the protection of your online life when it comes to authentication
- Take advantage of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Whether you are using a key generating app/device, a text message or phone call, or an email, use MFA. Not all MFA is the same, but one thing is certain: using MFA protects your online better than not using MFA.
- Never share passwords. When more than one person is keeping a scret it gets harder to keep that secret.
- Use unique passwords per site/system. If you use the same password in multiple places, hackers have tools that will quickly try those password at many other sites. Therefore, if any site you use is compromised, they all are for you. Using a unique password per site protects you. It also lets you know who failed to protect your data.
- Don not use iterative or progressive passwords. mypassword1, mypassword2, etc. Needles to say, if your password is ever compromised anywhere, the bad guys will figure out your system using a simple robot.
- Do not expose your passwords to unnecessary risk. For example, how many times have you seen a password written on a sticky note on the user's monitor? Other fails in password protection include the under the keyboard trick, the passwords.txt file on your computers main screen, etc.
- Using password phrases is actually not good password protection. If a compuer can automaticaly crack a 5 character password in less than 15 minutes, the using a pass phrase that might be 25+ characters long is better right? Not really. Think of each word in your pass phrase as a character instead of a word. Thus a password like KingOrangePuppySurfing would be a 22 character password, however a computer cracking it would see it as 4 character password. Computers can throw words as easily as they do lettters. I would be that if a map of your social media was used to make a rainbow table the cracking of your pasword would go in mere seconds.
There are many methods you can use to protect your passwords through techniques that make your passwords complex and unique.