Skip to main content
Cyber Security

Passwords

By October 29, 2022No Comments

Let ProtectIQ work with your password to keep hackers away.

Password resets every 90 days have been an essential part of cybersecurity and compliance routines for decades. But now, expired passwords will become less frequent thanks to modern cybersecurity practices such as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), which you should take advantage of whenever it is made available to you.

When you sign into your online accounts, a process called “authentication”, you’re proving to the service that you are who you say you are. Traditionally that’s been done with a username and a password. Unfortunately, that’s not a very good way to do it. Usernames are often easy to discover; sometimes they’re just your email address. Since passwords can be hard to remember, people tend to pick simple ones, or use the same password at many different sites.

That’s why almost all online services, banks, social media, and shopping have added a way for your accounts to be more secure. You may hear it called “Two-Step Verification” or “Multifactor Authentication”, but the good ones all operate off the same principle. When you sign into the account for the first time on a new device or app (like a web browser) you need more than just the username and password. You need a second thing, what is called a second “factor”, to prove who you are.

A factor in authentication is a way of confirming your identity when you try to sign in. For example, a password is one kind of factor, it’s a thing you know. The three most common kinds of factors are:

  • Something you know – Like a password, or a memorized PIN.
  • Something you have – Like a smartphone, or a secure USB key.
  • Something you are – Like a fingerprint, or facial recognition.

The easiest way to protect yourself from cyber threats is by having a strong password. It’s simple – the longer and more complex your password, the more difficult it is to crack. Shorter and simpler passwords take less time and resources for hackers to compromise. Hackers have created databases of the most common words, phrases, and number combinations that they can run your password through to find a match. The following are some common password themes that you should avoid: Birthdays, Names, Phone numbers, Sports teams, and simple obfuscations of a common word (“P@$$w0rd”).

What Makes a Good Password? To start, your password should be at least 10 characters long (more is better!), with at least one capital letter, one number, and one special character (“@”, or “%”, etc.). As an added layer of security, change your passwords on a regular basis to ensure that you stay ahead of the hackers. And, whenever possible, you should use multi-factor authentication, such as Google’s “Two Step Verification” to add an extra layer of security.

Remember, the best passwords contain as much randomness as possible – using unlikely combinations and random characters is a great strategy. Be creative!

  • Bad: Fuzzydog82
  • Better: %FuZZyD0G#8254!
  • Best: myFuzzyDog-eats4bones!Aday-BIG$

It’s also important to remember that you should not use the same password for multiple accounts, no matter how strong it is, because if one account gets compromised, then they’re all compromised.

With ProtectIQ™, you will receive the internet security you need. It provides subscribers with timely notifications about threats in the network. Each time the classification engine detects a threat in the network, ProtectIQ neutralizes it and sends a notification to the subscriber via the CommandIQ app. The notification indicates that the threat has been neutralized and includes details about the device that was attacked when the attack occurred and which IP address the attack came from. ProtectIQ is a network-level security application that works quietly in the background and proactively keeps malicious websites, viruses, and intrusion away from your home 24×7.

ProtectIQ is included with your RTC Networks internet service on the Gigaspire router. If you don’t currently have a Gigaspire please contact us to install this upgraded router for free. For more information please visit our Wi-Fi page.