Can You Stop Malware With Simple Passwords?

WE support the courageous few standing up to the purveyors of malware. Those malcontents either make fun of your hard work or wish to make money out of your distress. Stand up for yourselves!
Web-wise thought for the day: The best anti-virus software is no substitute for your own common sense. A majority of today's cyberheists begin with malware that is spread via email attachments. Many of these threats will go undetected by anti-virus tools in the first few days. Read that last sentence again if you didn't get it.
You'd be surprised how few business people don't think of these little things, these small but important factors. Make it hard for the hackavists and they will go elsewhere to peddle their destruction.
YOU STAND UP TO MALWARE AND REFUSE TO BACK DOWN!
But you also have to do your part!
Good morning friends. Speaking of common sense, let's discuss our password control. Password control? That sounds easy, doesn't it. But do your employees think about it with the same seriousness you know you must attach to the subject in order to keep your computer system and your business safe? Do you?
What brought this particular subject to my attention was something I read the other day. A study was completed on the most common digit passwords currently used in machines today. Do you know what the most common digit password was for a machine needing six digits? 123456. How many readers got it before I showed it to you?
This, my friends, is the primary reason why there are tens of thousands of hackers breaking into computer systems with viruses or a single virus in the malware. Tens of thousands of new virus attacks on a regular basis.
See the problem that we all have? Hackers have gone wild and we have new viruses each and every day and they find a place because most people just don't want to bother with the little things we can all do. Things like: Good Password Control. We users of computer systems make it easy for them. If they are going to foist destruction on us, let's at least make them work for it.
Now keep in mind that passwords are, in general, transmitted and stored by plain text transmission. The encryption part is fairly simple. Make sure encryption is used. You will find Secure Socket Layer (SSL) pretty awesome. You will recognize that SSL is being used when you see "https" instead of "http," at the beginning of a web page address and also by a padlock symbol in your browser.
Secondly, your storage is solved by "hashing." A hash is the result of processing plaintext in order to create a unique, fixed length identifier.
You don't have to be an expert on these things; just be aware that it works and you need it. We all need to do our part together.
Password security is helped by "salting." This is a random value added before the hashing. Salting only helps if truly random salts are used and long salts.
There are a number of different type of attacks that you will find against your passwords. One is called "brute force attack," and is simply a software program that tries to find your password by building together all possible letter combinations. This type of attack is foiled by those limits that are placed on the number of tries being used. I know you find it a nuisance, but this is why it is there.
A second type of attack against your passwords is the "dictionary attack." This is where the software goes all through possible dictionary spellings and words to try and find the right combination.

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