Cyber security is of vital importance in the modern world and creating secure passwords is at the forefront of protecting your personal accounts. It's common knowledge that people still manage to use passwords such as ‘abc123’ and ‘password’ to protect laptops and computers with sensitive information available just by guessing the correct combination.
With the advance of modern technology used by hackers to access people's accounts, you will need much more than just a security question and an email to reset your password after your social media account has been hacked.
One Study found that one in eight answers could be guessed in five attempts and 20% of people forget their answers within six months. Password reset links being emailed to you is the most common way being used today. However, this presents its own issues as linked email accounts can be hacked if they are connected.
Andy Greenberg commented on the new way apps are using Facebook to protect its users:
“ Facebook’s new system works by allowing apps or websites to store an account recovery ‘token’ on Facebook servers. When a user turns the feature on, the service pushes that token to Facebook via the user’s browser in an HTTPS-encrypted connection. From then on, if at any point the user forgets his or her password, or loses a device used for two-factor authentication, they can retrieve the token by proving their identity to Facebook, and then use it to recover access to the account they were locked out of ”.
Andy Greenberg, Wired.com
If you would like to read more of Andy’s article about how apps are using Facebook as protection, you can here.
It is hoped all social media platforms will follow this system which can require imputing a temporary code that is sent to the user via text and can require a user to identify pictures of friends to prove that it is still them.
These types of systems need improving across the internet, not only is more valuable information being stored online but hackers are becoming wiser and are finding ways around these question and answer security questions.
Tips to protect your password
- Use biometrics where possible
Smartphones, tablets and laptops have adopted fingerprint technology. This is a much more secure way for you to access your files safely. HSBC has been the highest profile company to adopt biometrics, launching voice recognition to provide safety for its customer’s banking.
- Multifactor authentication
Adding additional steps to the process of entering your password this is a much stronger way of stopping anybody from getting into your accounts. A text code is the most common way to do this, typed in as you log in.
- Password managers
Password managers are an easy way to store your complicated passwords so that you do not need to remember each password for each website.
What does the future hold for passwords?
Biometric identification will slowly take over from the standard word password. The use of behavioural biometrics could include devices analysing exact handwriting style as this is one of the only things that can be unique to everyone. Microsoft has developed ‘Windows Hello’ which allows for people to have more secure access to Windows devices using fingerprint and facial recognition.
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