How to Create A Strong Password

Years ago when the Internet was still 'wet behind the ears', using a simple password seemed like a good idea.

Today things have changed and it is critical to update this policy for every individual. There are too many ways for bad people to figure out your password, to leave it as a simple work or word and number. 
Here is a great and quick primer video from Google to help understand how to create a great password.

ALWAYS make a unique strong password for your email so other people cannot verify your password changes.

Password Checker Sites - Use these!

A recent popular Trojan that took account passwords from a famous technical blog site, Gawker.com has been a focus of geek attention.
The UK paper called The Telegraph also wrote about the 25 weakest passwords in use today. These accounts at Gawker were broken into because of weak passwords.
Hackers have been showing more and more interest in breaking into web accounts like Gmail, Hotmail.com, Comcast.net, Live.com, Twitter.com, Ffacebook.com, etc.

While Gmail has released something called 2 step verification as an EXCELLENT option for your Google Account, most other sites are still not doing this.

For a sanity check there are some reliable and trustworthy web sites you can use to test your existing passwords; to see how strong they are.  These great sites let you know if your password is strong enough for today's web:

Microsoft Password Strength Checker
How Secure Is My Password?
The Password Meter
WolframAlpha
our favorite Steve Gibson Password Haystack Webpage 

For creating a very complicated password, consider using Steve Gibson’s  Password Generator Webpage

This is so importnat that we have now published this on both blogs.
- credits to lifehacker.com and grc.com !

Employee Purchasing in the Enterprise - survey results

Companies that have grown too quickly and lack IT device purchasing policies, or reduced workforce within in the IT divisions have been prone to allowing employees make their own purchasing decisions, or worse yet (for security reasons) use their own home devices to access corporate servers and email. This directly impacts the Intellectual Property security within that organization.
Recent article "Tablets Gain Ground"by Lauren Brousell in CIO magazine discussed survey results the statistics based around these issues. 

CIO Magazine has recently taken surveys and compiled data from about 260 CIO level respondents for current purchasing and corporate access trends within businesses:
1) 36 percent allow employees to access corporate email on personal devices
2) 23 percent allow access to corporate applications
3) 6 percent  allow workers to buy their own devices (it is not clear if they were requiring their employees to stay within purchasing guidelines.)

The conclusion is employees who purchase their own devices (laptops, mobile phones and tablets) are given limited access to corporate networks, if any. Mostly the employees are given access to the Internet from within the buildings, but also forced to sign employee policy riders that put responsibility and liability on the individuals - that could lead to termination.