Passwording

          In 2013 a communications company in the UK called "Ofcom" released information on research done regarding password security. They concluded that out of 1805 people surveyed, more than 55 percent of those people used the same password on almost all the websites they used on average. "Why does this even matter?" you may be thinking, but the reason this is so important is because of your password security. No, it doesn't mean that you're guaranteed to get hacked or have your information stolen because you use the same password for different websites. It simply means that you as an individual are at a higher risk of getting personal or even financial information stolen. 

Imagine that in a world of unfortunate events, you have one of your social media accounts compromised. If what mentioned above were the case, regarding all your account passwords being the same, the criminal that is responsible now has the opportunity to steal information from all of your other accounts! Yes, this includes your bank account.

Ofcom's research also mentioned that 26 percent of the people surveyed agreed to have been using passwords that contained their birthday dates, pet names and even simple number orders like "123456". One can only imagine how much of the country is making the same mistake nevertheless the whole world.

In America, the numbers aren't very satisfying either. Recently in 2009, the US-CERT team, short for "United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team", released a security tip article where it showed that in america alone about 73 percent of americans fell victim to cyber security frauds such as stolen credit cards, viruses and their actual computers being compromised. Situations such as these can be helped by creating strong passwords.

The US-CERT team explains that the most efficient way to protect an account is to have a strong password. However, many people fail to realize what strong password consists of. Although it won't completely prevent account information being compromised, here are good ways to choose a password and protect yourself from the many threats of cyber security:

• Don't use passwords that are based on personal information that can be easily accessed or guessed.
• Don't use words that can be found in any dictionary of any language.
• Develop a mnemonic for remembering complex passwords.
• Use both lowercase and capital letters.
• Use a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters.
• Use passphrases when you can.
• Use different passwords on different systems.

When I first read the tips given by the US-CERT team, I realized it wasn't the first time I read about creating a strong password using mnemonics or techniques using a series of words. Although this is something all people in the computer field should know I believe it's imperative that all web users should and are also informed of this technique. A good example would be is if I created a password knowing "I love to play video games", which I do, and instead of making my password "videogames"

I would instead make it "Iltpvg", which if you notice, is the first letter of every word of my sentence stating my love for video games. Making some lower case letter and capitalize them make them much stronger. Throw some numbers in the mix and you have yourself a much stronger password.

References:

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/04/users-same-password-m-websites/

http://www.infosecisland.com/blogiew/8042-Cybercrime-Victims-Feel-Off.html

https://www.us-cert.gov/nas/tips/ST04-2