Winning @ Passwords: Tech Talk Video

TKS TECH TALK SERIES VIDEO: WINNING @ PASSWORDS

Did you miss our latest tech talk? No worries, we’ve got it here for you to watch at your convenience. 

We didn’t pick the words “Passwords are Killing You” lightly. The subject of how we do passwords, in general, is really important today.  First off, what’s the problem? Why are we talking about this? What are the overall issues that we’re seeing with customers? We talk with a ton of people and stay educated about the industry. So this isn’t just what we’re seeing, although we here at Turn Key Solutions do see a lot of these issues.

The first issue that we’ve got to talk about and solve is weak passwords. The second is reusing those passwords. Third is the issue of passwords being stored in horrible places, or shared in really insecure ways. These are all three, these are very, very serious issues. And you know, the biggest issue and why it’s such a scary thing, and walk through solutions, don’t panic. The biggest reason that these three kinds of points are such a problem is that the hackers know we’re doing it to hackers realize you’re doing it that hackers know that you have really terrible passwords, that you’re using those same passwords everywhere that a lot of people do. We’re sending them in crazy places such as texting them, emailing them and clear text, just taking care of our passwords very poorly.

How that has resulted in any kind of a visual or just a hard number of what the hackers are doing with this is that is the easiest kind of pulled from an IBM study that was conducted, they conducted every year. They look at companies around the world organizations, nonprofits, and government organizations, and they do a really powerful, very comprehensive study. What they found is that last year, in their report, they found that the average cost of a breach of a company or nonprofit or government organization was 4.3 5 million. Now that was global. Here in America, what they found is that the average was $9.44 million. That’s like $5 million dollars more here in America, we have a really bad problem. Why and how does this relate directly to passwords? Is it that 81% of company data breaches are caused by having poor password policies, poor passwords, period, and just doing this poorly. So if we could solve 81% of these problems by getting everybody to have good passwords and good password practices, we would make a massive dent in your company’s safety, your personal safety, and really just the whole world would benefit from this.

We’re going to give you four solutions. Walking through this, the first thing that we have to do and this is just incredibly important is to have strong passwords. A strong password can make or break you. The password that you were using back in 2000 just are not cutting it anymore. What would take a hacker back in 2003, four years to crack is now only taking about 42 minutes and in some cases 42 seconds. We found on some sites that were able to find it even quicker. So the password security1 is just not going to cut it anymore. You need to have a very long and unique password.

So with that, if you take the trick that I have in just two simple steps, you can take something from your memory or personal experience, and make a five or six-word phrase that you can remember specific to you. And with that phrase, for instance, mine is “got my first camera eight”. From there, I took that phrase, and then took unique characters, numbers, symbols, and a combination of all of those to make a very long, unique, strong password. With that, you have a password that is 18 characters long and easy to remember password. Probably the only person that is going to know this is my parents, though it’s something that’s very unique to me. No one should be able to figure this out easily. Hopefully, it will take about 300 months for someone to crack this current password at the state that we’re in now.

First step to securing your passwords and doing well is to have complicated strong and long ones, figure out a way that works for you. Step two is to change your passwords, to unique passwords, and you need to have a different password everywhere you go. Next step is to turn on MFA everywhere possible. Let me give you the same example if the hacker was able to steal your username and password for Chick-fil-A, and if you’re using the same username and password at PayPal, the hacker goes there to log in too. Then the fourth and final recommendation that we have is to put a password manager system into your overall stack of protections, your day-to-day practice. A good password manager accomplishes that really well and keeps them secure. So wrapping up, the four steps that we got to talk about and got to make sure that you understand to start working into your practice. I’ll give you a hint, the one in Google Chrome is not a phenomenal one right now at this point. It’s not a good place to store your passwords. Step one, change all your passwords to really strong ones. YES- ALL OF THEM.

I know most people need help with this. And these are four of the best, most solid pieces of advice I can give you. We look forward to being of service to you and answering any questions. If there’s anything we can do to help please let us know. Reach out to us ask@tks.la or call 225-751-4444 or visit our website at www.turnkeysol.com.