Category Archives: Security
Ransomware
We hear more and more about ransomware these days. It is a class of malware that takes a computer or mobile device and/or its data hostage and demands payment to free it. It operates by encrypting the files and holding the decryption key until the victim pays money.
Security: Passwords
Passwords. I recently heard a tale about a disaster that befell someone who picked an insecure password. A strong password is at least 10 characters long, and contains a mix of upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers, and special characters. The strongest passwords are a mix of random characters, but who can remember those? There is, however, a trick. Make up a sentence based on something you can easily remember, like where you lived when you were ten years old, and take the first character from each word or number, and throw in a couple of special characters at the end. For example, “I lived at 123 Pleasant Lane, Anytown, Anystate”. Becomes “Il@123PLAA@@”. No security is perfect, but this technique is pretty good.