Curiosity in Practice
How old is the password to your online banking? Could you throw it a 1st birthday party and invite any of its friends over (Facebook, Email, Amazon, Etc.)?
The sad truth is a good password should never live to see its first birthday. Please help me end birthday parties for passwords in 2012 by changing your online passwords today.
If you are in the security community you have seen this scathing criticism of the way BSides is ran and the response.
I wasn’t asked but I have an opinion on how I would like to see BSides fixed:
The forming of a national council of 10 BSides Coordinators who would be responsible for setting guidelines for how new events are brought online and how money from the BSIDES organization is distributed.
Election of an executive officer for a two year term who would be supplied with a modest travel budget to attend as many events as possible to help mentor coordinators. (My personal vote would be for Jack Daniel to steer the boat for the first two years.)
The deemphasizing of the two big events in LV and SF as $100,000+ events and the emphasizing of smaller events. I think the smaller events are going to be the driving force of keeping BSides alive and companies will quickly stop wanting to support parties in Vegas.
Santa has a naughty list and checks it twice.
I know “blacklisting” is a naughty word in the security community but Santa does it and so should you.
There is no reason that if you are charged with protecting a network you shouldn’t have a list of naughty people you don’t want on your network. A blackhole DNS server along with ip geolocation blocking can save your network by helping keep known bad people out.
Everyone loves Santa.
Security people have a bad habit of not being the most liked person in their company and many have taken on the persona of the Grinch and love it.
“No, You cant use your new IPAD on the network”
The bad news is no one likes the Grinch and they aren’t going to check with you when they want to do something. On the other hand everyone loves Santa and will even give you cookies.
Santa does very little work and gets most of the credit.
Santa gets a lot of credit for the mayhem caused on Christmas night but actually does very little of the actual work.
As security professionals we spend a lot of time trying to stop “Santa” when we really need to worry about more realistic threats.
Last year Cyber Monday sales topped $1 billion for the first time making it the busiest online shopping day ever. Shopping online can be convenient and save you a bunch of money but here are some easy rules to follow to make sure that you are shopping safely.
Don’t Use Debit Cards Online.
If a website should lose your information to hackers or the website mischarges you that money is coming straight out of your checking account. You will likely be able to get all your money back but the time of trying to get money put back into your bank account during the holiday season is a stress that isn’t needed.
Check your credit card statements.
Log in to your credit cards website after purchases and verify that you have been charged the correct amount and check for suspicious activity.
Use Good Passwords.
Your passwords should be as long as possible. Longer than 15 characters is a great place to start. its not that hard. “its not that hard” is an example of a good password. It is 17 characters long and isn’t easily guessable.
Use Different Passwords.
You should never use the same password on multiple websites. That way if someone hacks one website and steals your password they are not able to access all of your online accounts.
Protect your computer.
Your computer should always have the most recent updates installed and you should be running up-to-date ant-virus. I always suggest installing Secunia PSI on your PC and if you don’t have current anti-virus Microsoft Security Essentials is free and does a good job. Also OpenDNS is a great way to make sure your computer can’t access known bad websites.
Pass up deals too good to be true.
A website you never heard of is not selling an IPAD2 for $99. It is a scam to get your credit card information. I promise.
Shop at home.
Wireless networks at your local coffee shops are easy to “eavesdrop” on so the guy in the corner might be writing a paper or he may be waiting for you to type in your password and credit card number so he can steal it. It is much safer to do all your online shopping at home.
Thanksgiving is next week and I always try to take some time to think about how blessed I am. I have a great job that I love, a great house and a great family. I am no where near the 1% but I am blessed beyond what I deserve to be.
Every year my church gives away Thanksgiving baskets to those in our community that are less fortunate. I try to be part of this program because it really grounds me and gets me ready for the consumer centered holidays of the next month or so. It also doesn’t take a lot to give back but hopefully those people who received the baskets will be blessed.
And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. – Hebrews 13:16