World Password Day: Importance, Need And A Message
They’re amazing, they’re complex, they’re ubiquitous, and we often forget about things that aren’t exactly healthy for us. We’re not talking about anniversaries (although sometimes we are!). You will see what we mean. We are talking about your password.
We use them to protect the most private parts of our lives and to protect our finances, our health records, or perhaps just our emails. World Password Day reminds us of the importance of these little crypto-keys and that they are ubiquitous in character recognition to sustain your life and are your digital line of defense.
Passwords exist as long as people keep secrets. However, most people think about what we put in the box that comes after the username and email on all these websites.
But long before that, he served as a key figure in spy and intelligence societies in particular. When you want to make sure the person you’re talking to is the one sent by your organization, why not ask them for a password?
Secret organizations such as Masons and other fraternal organizations often demanded you for them before you left the door. Without a way to keep secrets, wouldn’t it work much in a secret society?
Digital Security:
These days, things like this are less of a concern, but digital security has become essential to our existence today. Sometimes it protects your identity on our favorite web forums, and everyone has a Facebook account that can be protected.
The problem is, where most people have dozens these days before you just need two or three passwords. Worse still, their protocol is often different, requiring certain characters (numbers, capitals, symbols) and refusing to use others. It’s hard to have a global password, and security experts say it’s a scary idea anyway.
World Password Day is here to warn the world and to raise awareness that it is important to take care of your passwords to protect yourself from identity theft.
Data is more important than currency these days. If malicious hackers on the Internet can gain access to your account details, they can impersonate you, steal your data, and even extort money from you. What’s more, they can do all this while effectively covering their tracks. Even if you want to go after them and get your money back, you can’t do that.
We have alarming statistics about the current state of password security. Business insiders conducted research to determine how vulnerable the accounts are, and discovered that 10,000 common passwords allow 98% access to all accounts. In other words, most people have been using the same password – and at the same time for many years.
Career hackers know this:
Career hackers know this – and that’s part of the reason why they’ve been so successful over the years. So World Password Day is an attempt to step back against it. Administrators want to make the world aware of the importance of having a strong password. A password that matches your date of birth is easily identified. In their opinion, passwords should be long, complex, and should not match real words.
World Password Day organizers are also pushing for two-factor authentication. The idea is that you are trying to access your account, and use two types of security to increase that possibility, not anyone else’s.
Two-factor authentication can take many forms. Typically, this involves using a regular password and then sending an alert to your phone to verify that you are in fact logged in.
Strong Password:
Interestingly, this day is meant to celebrate strong passwords. It sounds like a weird idea to take, but when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. We use our passwords to protect all of our digital information, from our social media profiles to our bank accounts. Passwords are fundamental to our security and privacy. Without them, we are an open book. Therefore, it is important for people to know every day what a strong password is and how to secure it.
The program was originally conceived by renowned security researcher Mark Burnett. They found that the passwords most people were using were frustrating. So he encouraged people to set up their own Password Day once a year, where they would update all their accounts with new, random passwords.
The idea has been dormant for the better part of a decade. But then semiconductor giant Intel raised the issue again in 2013 as part of its ongoing security measures. Since then, the program has gained prominence, and organizers have now developed a timetable for repetition over the next ten years.
It will be interesting to see how Password Day develops over time. Right now, a model password includes letters, numbers, shapes, and symbols, but that won’t always be the case in the future. Who knows how quantum computers and artificial intelligence will change the game? We will have to wait.
All You Need:
All you need to do is look at your passwords and fix them, you will come up with nonsense phrases that you will remember, add spaces, change the letters in numbers and create things that no hacker can even guess.
Avoid names, dates, birthdays, pet names, all of the things we all often post on Facebook as part of a meme. (How many ‘your superhero name’ have you done? Hmmm?) These are just a few options.